Breakfast

One of my favorite times of day is breakfast time. Not much beats the 20 or so minutes of uninterrupted quality time I get with Riley. The nice thing is that given The choice between eating at home with me and eating at school with his friends, he will still choose me about 99% of the time. I know the day will come (and probably not too long from now) when he chooses his friends over me most all of the time, so for that reason, I treat breakfast with Riley as the sacred event that it is. If my phone rings, I ignore it. No checking email, no reading the news. No tv. Just me and my little man (well, and the dogs too). We talk about whatever is on his mind. We talk about what he's going to do at school that day. We talk about whatever it is that I know he's learning at school that week. We practice his letters and numbers. We sing songs. He has transitioned over time from spilling most of what he's trying to spoon into his mouth to getting upset if a single piece dropped (although now he has realized that Wrigley likes it when he drops a few pieces, so he "accidentally" spills a few now). He has gone from having to ask me to help him get the last few pieces in the bowl to grinning widely and saying, "See?!?!" and tilting his bowl over slightly to show me has finished very last piece by himself. Now he gets the box of Cheerios, his bowl and spoon and even pours his own cereal and milk (with close supervision - he gets the concept of pouring but not so much the concept of stopping). He has grown up before my eyes a little bit every morning and I will gladly be a little later than I should be for work to share these simple little moments with just him. Even after breakfast is over and I get up to clean up our dishes, I still love to take my time. Wrigley likes to lay under the breakfast table (no doubt to catch the accidental spills) and Riley calls it her bedroom. he likes to climb down from his chair and hang out with her in her bedroom while I clean up. And each and every time I come back into the room, he is snuggling with her and they both look up at me like, "What?" and then Riley asks me to take their picture. Still have yet to get a good one that captures the sweetness of the moment, but this will at least give you an idea.