One Extra Unicorn
On days that are rushed, I tend to default to cereal for breakfast. It’s what I loved growing up, but something I try not to do for the kids because I want them to have a varied and warm breakfast (especially in the winter). Recently, I was running very late and had only 10 minutes to get the kids out of the door for school.
I usually pour out some Lucky Charms and then mix in some plain Cheerios (and some protein cereal for my 4 year old son C because he tolerates it). I also poured out some cashews to add some protein to the breakfast and my 6 year old daughter E would gobble those up too. They were going to start eating, but E noticed that C had the famous and desirable unicorn marshmallow in his Lucky Charms. She started to get sad and I told her to try and be grateful that she also had marshmallows. They all taste the same and it’s randomized.
E had a good attitude about it and started to eat her cereal. Now thanks to my wife, there are also some Lucky Charms poured into the plain Cheerios container because she didn’t want to leave a small bag of it around. It drives me crazy every morning to have to pick out only the plain Cheerios for baby L, but it’s something that worked out in E’s favor that morning.
When I poured the Cheerios out for E, I saw a unicorn marshmallow that was slowly starting to come out. Normally, I would have stopped pouring because there were enough Cheerios on her plate (yes they eat cereal in a plate with no milk mixed in), but because E had such a great attitude about not having a unicorn marshmallow, I decided to keep pouring until it finally fell out. She noticed it was getting close to falling out also and when it did, she was super excited.
This was just one small moment in a 10 minute hectic sequence of me getting breakfast ready (pouring cereal counts!) and getting them out of the door to school, but that’s exactly what parenting looks like. It’s periods of chaos, some small pep talks and learning, and some nice moments with your kiddos sprinkled in. I’m glad E had a positive attitude about the whole situation even though she was still sad. It’s ok to be sad and because she displayed the right outcomes, I tried to make sure she got what she really wanted - a similar tasting random marshmallow that I hate Lucky Charms for introducing because it causes me such pain every morning aka the unicorn marshmallow.
