First My Sandal . . .

Now my breakfast. It is no longer mine. I want it back.

Each and every morning, we have a very set routine we all follow. Mommy gets the kids up and goes in the shower. Matilda gets ready while the baby sits on my lap and cuddles out the grogginess. Roughly ¾ of the way through Mommy’s shower, Gertrude gets a burst of energy and starts running around like a maniac in her strange off-kilter way. She runs like her knee joints are made out of Jell-O and the world is slightly tilted to the left. She veers, corrects course, veers again. The whole time she runs she says, “Bwababwababwababwaba.” I don’t know why. Perhaps because she’s a weird little kid.

I then get in the shower while the kids brush their teeth, etc. We come out to the kitchen together, make coffee and the baby and her sister go get the paper while we fix them breakfast.

About this time Kismet, the cat, comes out of hiding with an angry look on her face. It’s like she’s just come off a bender and our chattering is ringing in her head like a bunch of monks singing a particularly raucous Gregorian chant. She always looks at us like, “Would you shut the &$*# up? It’s EARLY.”

We give the girls their breakfast while I fix my own and wait for the coffee to finish brewing. Sometimes I can’t wait and I just stick my head underneath the stream of steaming coffee and suck it down raw. If it’s a particularly bad morning, I’ll grab the carafe and drink it straight out of there, forgoing the traditional ceramic mug.

I then sit down with the paper and a bowl of cereal. Matilda at my left, Gertrude straight across. With my first spoonful of the crispy, healthful crispies (unless it’s Apple Jacks, my favorite from childhood), Gertrude starts yelling, "All done! All done!” and hops off her chair, spoon or fork in hand. She then runs over to me yelling, “My daddy, my daddy” and crawls on my lap.

Each morning I think she’s just coming over to give me some affection. But within seconds, her spoon has plunged into my cereal and she’s going to town on my breakfast. Sometimes she can’t get the cereal on her baby sized spoon and she asks for help. As if I’m going to aid her in stealing my food.

Of course, I always do.

Once the last remnant of the cereal is gone, she leaves her spoon in my bowl and hops off to go play before we leave for the sitter.

I thought this was cute the first time it happened. Reasonably adorable the second. Kind of sweet the third and rather hobbit like the fourth. Now I view her as a food leech.

So, yesterday I thought I’d do something different. I picked up a twigs and nuts cereal and dumped it into a bowl of yogurt. Surely, I thought, she wouldn’t like this. Climbing up, she said, “eeeeww, yuck” when she looked at it. But, she plunged her spoon right in and started eating. At first, she gave a disgusted face at the encounter with the yogurt. But within seconds, she was wolfing down my cereal.

When she finished, I gave her her spoon and asked her to put it in the sink. There was still a glob of yogurt on it. Out comes her tongue and she’s lapping it up like a dog with table scraps. Looking up at mom she says, "Yummmmm.”

Today I gave her her own bowl of this concoction. She said, “eew yuck” to it and ate mine. Then she ate hers.

And you wonder why I named her after a hobbit. But she doesn’t have furry feet.

Still, I complain about this. I feel I should. I can’t set a precedent. Daddy isn’t a buffet line. But, her chubby little legs bouncing up and down while she sits on my lap . . . the fat little arm reaching around my neck when she says, “My Daddy”. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

I wouldn’t and I can’t. Who would take her?

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