Pancakes for Breakfast, Chapter One

I love waking up on a slow weekend morning and making pancakes for breakfast. My eldest daughter, Berit, at nearly 2 1/2, will eat a small stack while having full conversations with her daddy, who occasionally peeks at me out of the corner of his eye as if to telepathically say, "Did you hear what she just said? Remember it. It was adorable." And I ESP back to him, "I can't remember my own cell phone number, but I could never forget that." 

Ah, but this isn't a Norman Rockwell scene. Pan out from daddy and daughter and all of the whipped cream and syrup (I serve fruit, too, but focus primarily on the sweets), and you'll see a living room that we used to say wouldn't be filled with toys but is, a dog bed on the landing of our stairs (so Mosey can see out the windows, of course), several diaper bags filled and ready for any number of various outings and a wriggling, laughing, flailing 6-month-old trying to climb over my head but never out of my arms (put her down? And expect her to chill for a minute? Bah.). Mornings with an infant and toddler are typically hectic, but on weekends, when Trevor's home and we have no play groups, library hours, gymnastics, park dates or doctor's appointments, the chaos is set aside and we just relax. Until Marta poops and Berit needs a time-out (directly related to her sugar-laden breakfast) and we need to be at a fun, outdoor play place THAT MOMENT and we leave the breakfast mess for later (thanks a bunch, family). And at 11 p.m. I find myself sopping up our syrupy pancake breakfast, and hopefully taking a minute or two to write in this blog, so my children will be able to one day read about our lives when they were little (because God knows scrapbooking went out the window when Marta came along and there were two). Maybe they'll think I was clever and efficient. Wouldn't that be something?