Breakfast of Champions

Are you a night owl or a morning person?

As a parent, I often feel like I'm both!

I don't mind staying up on the late side (midnight to 1am). In fact, I have fond memories of occasional midnight trips to Walmart with my mom just to browse and chit-chat.

Parenthood has also necessitated that I'm a morning person, too. I remember my college days, when an 8am class was "too early". Ha!

My typical wake-up time these days is about 5:30am. I can "do" 5:30am and be awake right away, but the same doesn't apply for 5am. I feel better waking up at 6 am, but immediately feel worse because sadly we run "late" getting the boys out the door when we "sleep-in" until 6am.

Of my 3 boys, Big Brother is definitely our morning person. It isn't altogether uncommon for him to visit our room in the 6 o'clock hour--even on weekends--awake and raring to go (usually wanting to have breakfast, build something with legos, or play a game.)

Sure, 6am is early, especially on a weekend. But on the flip side, it also affords me some 1on 1 time with him, which is worth it's weight in gold. Even a 15 minute breakfast "date" before anyone else is up seems to make him quite happy and the rest of the morning go much more smoothly. I know it's hard for him being the oldest, because his two younger brothers naturally need more "help" from Mom-E and I.

Recently, we discovered that Big Brother has a penchant for french toast sticks from Sonic. (I can remember loving the ones from Burger King as a boy.)

So on his birthday this year, we started a new traidtion. Big Brother and I got up in the 6 o'clock hour and went to Sonic for a special birthday breaakfast, complete with french toast sticks. We had a really nice time, just chatting and laughing it up while keeping warm chilling in the car. Of course, getting there before 7am, we were the first customers of the day. We never noticed the extra long wait for our food because we were having such a good time.

As early as it was, it was so nice to be able to just slow down and enjoy each others' company with absolutely no sense of needing to rush.

And so, I look forward to many more birthday breakfast dates. I just hope that Big Brother is still a morning person when he's a teenager.

Have a good weekend,
Busy-Dad-E