Monday is Donut Day

It's Monday! Open Wiiiide!

It's Monday. First day of the work week, off to school again, and for Gianni, it's Donut Day.

I know what you're thinking. Every day should be Donut Day (no, wait, that's what I'm thinking.) But Donut Day has a context that has made our lives so much easier.

Like scores of other parents of willful young children, breakfast and eating meals in general has always been a struggle. We face the usual challenges:

"I don't WANT to eat that!"
"I've decided that I hate cereal."
"I'm only eating breakfast if it's Cap'n Crunch."

Pair that with the fact that Gianni has two food groups--Macaroni and Cheese--and you have the makings of a first-rate power struggle.

One day, Rick hit upon a brilliant idea. We were watching a Wallace and Gromit short and at one point, Wallace is getting breakfast ready. "Tuesday is porridge day, Gromit!" (insert bad Ringo Starr accent here.) Gianni adores all things W and G and seemed to really groove on the idea that Tuesdays in clay character land are reserved for porridge. So he and Rick made up a breakfast chart for our own home. And yes, Tuesday is porridge day. The week shapes like this:

Monday: Donuts
Tuesday: Porridge (or in our case, oatmeal)
Wednesday: Waffles
Thursday: Cinnamon Toast
Friday: Cereal and milk
Saturday: Pancakes
Sunday: Surprise!

It works. It really works. No matter what else is going on, Gianni accepts wholeheartedly that if it's Wednesday, you better be shoving that waffle in your piehole because It's the Law. Making pancakes on Saturday morning is one fine tradition. We even adapted a slightly looser schedule for lunch, since we must slavishly pack G's lunch every day (complicated by the fact that The Demon Nut is banned at his school. So Peanut Butter Sandwich Day is not happening so much).

Anyway, it's safe to say that we do lots of crack-brained parenting in our trial-and-error odyssey, but breakfast is one thing that we got just right. Sure, there are better things you can give your kid for breakfast than a yeasty Homer Simpson Special, but the chance to eliminate the morning breakfast fight is worth a baker's dozen.