For a few blissful months, our morning routine seemed to have finally resolved itself into a stress-free ballet of preparation. Each of us took care of our own responsibilities, and we met at the breakfast table at 7:45 for breakfast.<\/p>\n
Those days have rather inexplicably vanished. I don’t know why, but for the past several weeks, every morning has had me herding the boys like reluctant cats.<\/p>\n
I hate it, and this morning, I finally decided to make a change.<\/p>\n
“You,” I pointed at my oldest son. The time was 7:30, and he was lounging on the couch in his pajamas, reading a comic book. “Are you ready to go?”<\/p>\n
“Um.”<\/p>\n
“Okay,” I said. “I’m done. You want to get to school on time? It’s on you. You’re in charge.”<\/p>\n
“But-”<\/p>\n
“Nope.” I sat down at the kitchen table and turned on my Nexus. “You know what needs to happen.”<\/p>\n
He spun on his heel and started shouting at his brother. “Feed the fish! Get dressed! Comb your hair!” Then he ran off to his room.<\/p>\n
Wondering why I hadn’t thought of this earlier, I pulled on my shoes and poured myself a glass of water.<\/p>\n
“Breakfast!” my son shouted as he emerged from his room. “Eggs! We need eggs!”<\/p>\n
“Or cereal,” I said. “It’s 7:42” Preparing breakfast is one of my duties, along with making their lunches.<\/p>\n
“Nope.” He shook his head. “We have tests today, and that means eggs.”<\/p>\n
I couldn’t argue with that, especially since I’d put him in charge. I jumped to my feet and scrambled together a batch of cheesy camp eggs with grilled english muffins. It took about three and a half minutes.<\/p>\n
We wolfed down our breakfast, they took the dogs out back, and then he resumed barking orders. Unfortunately, his little brother had moved into his slow mode. “But I have to do this first,” he said. “and what about this?”<\/p>\n
“Do it in the car!” our commander shouted. “Go, go, go!”<\/p>\n
“I still have to comb my hair.”<\/p>\n
“Aaah! Get out!”<\/p>\n
Heh, heh, heh.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wish I’d thought of this months ago! Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-z5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}