An ordinary day – Breakfast and leaving home

Continuing from An ordinary day, Good Morning.

After trying out different methods for years, with trial and error, I learned that best way to manage kid’s menu is

(a) offer two alternatives, prepare/cook what your child chooses

or

(b) offer two alternatives but sell them what you want them to eat in a sneaky way.

In the worst case scenario, we have to get preapproval for prepared option. Even though they like all healthy breakfast options,  it is best to ask them of their preferences in advance, just in case they don’t have last minute decision changes.

After completing all these steps, they have their breakfast. At this point, my mission is to divert any distractions that might delay the eating process. Meaning:

Me: Come on kids. (Repeating hundreds times a minute.)

Next is bathroom and dressing ceremony. Here we will the opposite characters of my children, again.

Character #1: A daughter who must decide what to wear herself. She goes in front of the closet; chooses her clothes; asks me; after my approval, puts on what she chose. If there is something she can’t manage to put on herself such as pantyhose, she asks for my help and the whole process is over in 10 minutes.

Character #1: After bathroom time, he does not go in to the room where his closet is. First he goes to the living room, looks at a book. I warn him, he will ignore. I go next to him to poke him. He pretends like going towards his room. I change my tone and warn him again. He goes by my daughter who is changing her clothes. They start joking around. I take him to the room. Sometimes he chooses his clothes sometimes he focuses on something else in the room. He can’t focus on putting on clothes more than 3 seconds. He goes to another room and finds something to mess around. Finally, I run out of further patience, so I go and dress him up.

We are almost out of the house, but not quite yet. At the door, they always remember, they forgot to do something: Draw, read a book, finish a craft, something very important. It is easier to convince my son but my daughter is hard to persuade. So I let her do whatever she wants while I dress up my son and myself.

For few more minutes, my daughter keeps on whining she doesn’t want to go out. Regardless… Pushing and pulling, either me or my mother walks everyone out the door. Finally, we can have quite time until kids are back around 2:30pm.

An ordinary day – Dinner Delight