Popular kid breakfasts at our house:
- spoonful of peanut butter, cup of milk
- half a peanut butter sandwich, cup of milk
- dry cereal (a “compromise” variety such as Cinnamon Life, Honey Nut Cheerios, Frosted Mini-Wheats), cup of milk (or in Edward’s case, orange juice, since it helps to absorb the iron in the cereal)
- banana, cup of milk
- cinnamon toast, cup of milk
- muffin, cup of milk
- bowl of yogurt, cup of orange juice
- two hard-boiled egg whites with salt, cup of chocolate milk (this is only William so I’m not sure it counts as “popular”—but on the other hand it’s what he eats most mornings so it’s popular with HIM)
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My last trip to Target didn’t have much in the way of fun clearance (the clothing has been marked down at a snail’s pace recently, and when I did buy a few clearance kid t-shirts I noticed after washing them that they’re now cotton-poly instead of cotton, so that was a non-score), but I did bring home some things that make me feel happy and satisfied every time I walk past them:
This year I remembered ahead of time that on the first day of school the children will be coming home with piles of forms that need to be filled out with information that is the same as last year’s and the same as each other’s (could this process not be even SLIGHTLY computerized?), AND a request from each teacher for antibacterial wipes and facial tissues. Then I feel all panicky and frantic, as if the teacher will think that my week-long delay in sending in the requested items reflects badly on me as a parent. Target had both items on nice sales, so I got enough for each child to bring in a container of each and still have one of each left over.
I also got Elizabeth’s lunch box for first grade; she chose the owl one. (It inspired this week’s Milk and Cookies post on lunch boxes.) I wonder how many of our children are going to school with that cute owl lunch box? My mother is finding it fun to see the owl craze of the 1970s back in such full force.
Neither of my kid’s schools requested any sort of anti-bacterial anything this year. This concerns me. Does this mean that the budget is now taking care of anti-bacteria products or are we to be infested with bacteria this year?
I am so glad that our kids get their supply lists on the last day of school for the upcoming year…and then the teachers always bodyslam me with the wish list.
“Well, you don’t have to send these things in, but I could really use disinfecting wipes, gallon sized ziplock bags, paper cups and tissues. One of each from each student is sufficient “
And then I picture a dirty room and a teacher who doesn’t like my kids because *I* didn’t send these things.
I meant to finish that with …and so I send them, of course
I didn’t realize we were in the middle of an owl craze beyond our own household. I got my daughter a hooded bath towel with an owl face, wings and tail last spring and now she wants to be an owl for halloween.
I’m in love with owls. My mom brought the kid home a retro type owl t-shirt and I thought it was adorable. About a week later I was trying to figure out a theme for Boo’s bathroom and found myself browsing owl shower curtains. So cute!
I have a random question that relates to both of your points (breakfast and back to school fretting). My b-t-s fret has to do with my son’s peanut allergy. Do you (and do you think others who serve peanut butter for breakfast) wash hands after eating and before going to school(with or without peanut allergy kids in mind)?
Our school has a good policy about this – wiping down tables etc. – but I’m just curious whether you think peanutty hands in school are common or not.
It’s so satisfying to remember in advance that you need to buy something…and then get it on sale.
I didn’t know there was an owl craze in the 70’s! My daughter LOVES the owl stuff she has.
Mar- I’m not sure. I’d suspect post-meal hand-washing is uncommon except when the hands are actually food-covered (as with young children). On the other hand, many kids would use the bathroom before school and wash hands then. Still, I’d assume trace-peanut-residue hands were common, which is why I get panicky when I hear about kids who can’t even touch something that once touched something peanutty, because it seems like that would be every single thing in the entire world.
I am sending my mother this post; she seems to believe my children should be eating an entire continental breakfast spread each morning, and is very, very disappointed in their cup of milk and piece of toast. I TOLD YOU SO, MOM. *ahem*
Frosted Mini-Wheats are a staple in our house. We go through giant boxes of it. I think it’s a pretty good cereal though – lots of fibre, lots of iron, not much sugar and no salt.
I like that muffin recipe, I think I may try it.
I did hard boiled eggs for breakfast for years! Now for the past four I eat a gluten free toast or homemade piece of bread made with teff/flax, peanut butter, banana (wrapped in the bread) and a low fat cheese stick. ALways.
I don’t know if you remember this, but the macrame owls hanging on walls in the 1970’s? Attached to a reach piece of tree branch. I’d kill to find ours.
Thanks for posting the kids breakfast. My 2.5 year old hates eating breakfast. She’s just not that hungry before we leave in the morning. She will always eat peanut butter though, so I’m totally going to give her a spoonful of peanut butter and some milk in the morning.
Mar I can only comment on my experience but in my house my two year old gets a thorough wash down after every meal because, well, she’s two. My 8 YO finds PB loathsome and doesn’t eat it, but if he did, we badger him to use the bathroom and, therefore, wash his hands just before he leaves for school. I suspect that even if most school-age kids don’t wash right after breakfast, they likely use the bathroom and wash before heading to school.
We tend to eat bigger breakfasts in our house. And we try to provide more variety, including fruits and veggies. We consume a lot of muffins. I like to try different varieties. We’ve been using zucchini in lots of different recipes this summer.
We have yogurt, fruit, and cereal with one child almost always choosing peanut butter toast. One frozen waffle per child is consumed in the car on the way to school. No one drinks milk so I let the non-yogurt loving child choose string cheese if she wants. On weekends there are eggs or pancakes.
My school includes wipes and tissues on the list with the crayons and notebooks and folders. Also, our paperwork IS computerized! I updated my husband’s cell phone number, deleted the friends who moved out of state from the list of “People my children can be released to” and hit save. It crosses over to all kids at that school, too, so I just do it once for both kids.
@Mar – when my kids were in preschool with a peanut allergic child, I always had them wash their hands with soap and water before preschool. Our elementary school has no rules re: peanuts so I let them wipe their face/hands with a washcloth.
My mom collected owl stuff in the 1970’s-which is kind of funny because she hated birds.
Ugghh, the dreaded before school breakfast is coming up. My daughter is a senior this year, but I still have to try and get her to eat in the morning before school. She isn’t hungry, which I do understand, but I think breakfast IS important.
Have you tried wheat germ in pancakes or smoothies or anything, really, for extra iron and folic acid? My kid doesn’t even notice (and neither does my husband, which is more amazing).
Mar-my pb loving kids always wash their hands and faces at home after eating but not at school. The allergy kids sit at a different table at lunch and are usually grouped together in certain classrooms (large elementary school with 16 classes in each grade) but they are not required to wash their hands after they eat lunch. My daughter takes a pb sandwich at least 4 days a week and my son will this year as well.
Mostly owl-related:
I love the owl lunch sack – Especially the mini owl ice pack that came with it!
My son (age 9, heading into 4th grade) chose the owl lunch sack from Target. I, uh, warned him that despite the primary colors, it’s a tad purse-like and might be perceived as girly. I tried to get one of my daighters to want the owl sack, so he would abandon it, but no dice. They chose Hello Kitty and some zebra-stripe/swirly pattern thing with the water bottle attachment. My son has had an owl infatuation for 3+ years now (it all started with the Webkinz owl). His infatuation spilled over to his sisters as well, and now one has some owl/hedgehog decor from Target and an owl quilt (handmade from Grandma). Speaking of owls, that online retailer called Lakeside Collection has owl bath accessories.
Tracy – (I don’t try to be anonymous, but my sign-in attempts never work… but I’m not a blogger, so nobody knows me anyway).
growing up i had the same breakfast every. single. day. until COLLEGE – life cereal with skim milk, or (in the winter) quaker instant maple syrup & brown sugar flavored oatmeal. with some skim milk poured in. :)
My daughter is obsessed with owls. I am finding myself a little obsessed myself. My mom has also caught the bug. She ordered that owl backpack from llbean that you have posted on Milk & cookies for my daughter and she didn’t even READ that post! LOL
All you have to provide is antibacterial wipes and tissues? My son starts Kindegarten on Monday and the list of things I need to provide is insane. I spent at least $60 on everything and I hear they want us to send more stuff in January.
-danish
Anon- No, it’s not all—it’s just the only two things I KNOW they’ll ask for. Everything else, I have to wait until they ask so I know what to get.
BTW, what do you do with all the extra egg yolks? I have a kid who prefers the whites, too, though she’s getting better at eating the yolks if the egg is boiled.
“The first day of school the children will be coming home with piles of forms that need to be filled out with information that is the same as last year’s and the same as each other’s (could this process not be even SLIGHTLY computerized?)” has inspired me to ask the head of our Parent Teacher Group if maybe this year they COULD be computerized. It could be on the school website right? A word document template? Would make life so great.
Oh, on the peanut butter question: I think you have to assume no. My kids eat frozen waffles with peanut butter for breakfast and they never wash their hands afterwards. One of them doesn’t get messy and the other wipes his face on his shirt — so the peanut butter is there.
StephLove- On the rare occasions I’m on an egg-salad-sandwich kick, I might add the yolks to the egg salad. Otherwise I just throw them out, feeling a pang.
One of my kids had a hot dog for breakfast this morning. (Free range! On a whole wheat bun!) Kid gets so grumpy from not eating that he’s too grumpy to want to eat anything. Except, evidently, a hot dog.
I’m scared of school lists, I can’t imagine having to get all that stuff. In the state where I live, you have to pay a rental fee for books in public school, too, which is super annoying.
Anyways, my kids like Frosted Mini Wheats, dry, and I feel like it’s a good cereal for them but holy LORD does it make a mess!
Re: post-PB consumption hand-washing. My kids are young enough that they require a thorough scrub-down after every meal, as well as a trip to the bathroom before we leave the house. So if we’re at the park, store, library, etc. chances are that my kids do not have PB traces on them. But maybe not so much for older kids? I don’t know.
Breakfast at our house is almost always either oatmeal or eggs and toast/tortillas.
I WANT THAT OWL LUNCHBOX. For myself.
We are asking parents (we always do) of kids in Harper’s class to try to remember a thorough hand washing before school if the kids eat peanut butter. She DOES have contact reactions so we are really trying to minimize introducing peanut butter (even a teeny tiny bit) into her classroom. HOWEVER she also spends lots of time other places in the school (and in the world at large) where people have probably been after eating peanuts or PB w/out hand washing.
A big key for us is also to have Harper frequently wash her own hands, so as not to inadvertently introduce peanut butter into her mouth which is when we definitely have big problems.
I get a headache if I think about it too much – like I can’t comprehend how she doesn’t have a reaction every time we leave the house.
I liked this so much that I posted my own.
I grew up eating cereal every day of my life, so I offer choices, too:
http://helloself.blogspot.com/2011/08/kid-breakfasts.html
Our non-picky one eats vanilla yogurt with granola or Special K mixed in, Frosted Mini Wheats or waffles. Picky one will eat a nibble of toast, few bites of waffle, bacon or some dry cereal and glass of milk. She is opposed to anything “mixed together” it’s either PB or Jelly but not together! I mix a batch of Belgian waffles on Sundays and cook them all, then freeze on a baking sheet the put in a bag in the freezer. I use whole wheat in the batter, might try adding some wheat germ to it too. I pre-cook bacon or sausage and bag it for microwaving.
One of the neighborhood kids told us that her mom wasn’t sending any wipes or tissues because when she was working at the school she went into a closet and it was stacked sky high with wipes and tissues. We are on unemployment so we sent them with the basics, pencils, erasers, folders and spiral notebooks and they said it was all fine. Our football team even did away with parents providing snacks this year because some families are unemployed.
I have a queen sized hand appliqued, hand quilted owl quilt my DMIL made for us in the 70’s for our waterbed! I’ll have to break it out if it’s back in style. LOL