Get in the habit of doing grand gestures for my kids.

When I wrote this list I couldn’t get this idea out of my mind. How I wanted to be a mom who put my kids first like that. I want pretty things, but my kids want them too. I’ve been bogged down about how I don’t have time or energy to create such splendor, even if it’s to celebrate the silliest of things (A day of Jammies! A Bath for Breakfast! Ice Cream Parlor Wanna Be!) and really? Who am I kidding!!!

I have everything I need.

I have her.

I have him.

I have them.

And I wasn’t willing to wait another day playing the “reason” game on why I could hold off, yet again, on making beautiful things happen in our lives. I decided to start with breakfast.

Here are all my reasons for why I thought I couldn’t do it, when I tell my daughter every single day that couldn’t and can’t aren’t words we believe in … I was lying out loud.

# Money.
# Needing to be gluten free/healthy.
# Time.
# Not being good enough.
# Not being perfect.
# Worrying that they wouldn’t like it.
# Worrying that I didn’t have what it takes, creatively or literally (items used) to pull it off.

Here’s the truth: I own a glue gun and we have internet streaming in our house 24/7. I have everything I need to pull this off. I don’t have to spend any money. Gluten free can be pretty, too. I make the time I feel is important. I’ve never been NOT good enough, I’m their mother. I’ll never be perfect. I’m allowed to take chances. It was damn time.

I even woke up early, which is something else on my life list, to see her face when she walked out of her room. My son woke up first and the first thing he said was “Woah.” … My daughter said “You surprised me!” and my heart said “YES, YES I DID!, I LOVE YOU!”

Breakfast is a historically difficult meal for me but it’s my very favorite to make and serve. The morning my mom announced my parent’s divorce to my siblings and I was the morning she stopped making breakfast. My mom is Martha Stewart, folks. She made every single meal, every single snack from scratch. Then one morning … it all changed.

Here’s a secret: I think this is when my journey with food begins. I’ve never acknowledged that publicly before. But all of a sudden there was a void in my normal routine. Something substantial – my breakfast, the beginning was all of a sudden the end. Since that morning I’ve struggled with how to feed myself in the morning, and I generally choose to feed myself sugar, which is love to me, really. It’s no wonder I wound up with a broken pancreas. I broke it with a broken nine-year old heart and a shattered life view.

Seeing Jill Tanis has put a lot of healing into this very subject and now I eat eggs, savory tastes, every morning. I don’t always like it, I even fight it some mornings, but I’m doing more than feeding my body … I’m reminding myself – at every beginning – that I can trust that sweetness is still there, that it’s around the corner, down the hall and in my pocket … all I have to do is see it. I no longer have to eat it.

So, Breakfast. It’s kind of a big deal to me. And I wanted to start where I left off, I guess, in showing my kids how very much I love them. That I can break barriers and tear walls down to build them up. That I can do hard things. Because I can.