Pancake Breakfast

On Wednesday night, as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed that we had run out of milk. In the morning, the kids would have a hard time getting breakfast together without the ease of pouring a quick bowl of cereal. I could have got in the car, and headed out to Ridley's to grab a gallon of milk, but I was ready to go to bed, and wasn't very interested in going out into the cold.

Then I spied a little paragraph on the side of a bag in the pantry. "Have a Krusteaz pancake breakfast today!" it said.

You know what, I thought, I should do that. I could be a great dad, showing the kids just how much I loved and appreciated them. Just imagine how happy they'd be in the morning when they came down, and smelled the hot pancakes; and fresh, homemade syrup. I usually didn't get up that early in the morning, and the kids had to get their own breakfast, but this time, I was going to make it a special morning.

So, in the morning, my alarm went off, and I went in and woke my oldest son up for school. Then I headed down the stairs, and got to work. I wanted to have the pancakes read by the time he came down from his shower. It was tight, but before a half hour had passed, I had a stack of pancakes, and a pot full of syrup ready to go for him. I smiled in anticipation.

And down the stairs he came...at a run.

"Did you wake me up late?" he asked in a squeaky shout.

I didn't know what he was talking about. "Uh, what?"

"It's seven o'clock! It's time for me to leave...past time for me to leave. I'm going to miss the bus." He grabbed his coat, and backpack, and dashed out the door.

I looked at the clock. He was right. It was time for him to leave. But I hadn't been down here cooking more than a half hour. Something weird had happened. Either my 6:00 AM alarm had not rung like it should have, or it did ring, and I'd turned it off and gone back to sleep without realizing that I'd done such a thing. Now, he was late, and possibly going to miss the bus. He'd eaten none of the pancakes that I'd lovingly prepared for him. In fact, he'd had no breakfast at all, and he'd had to run out the door without a lunch too. On top of that, since I'd thought it was 6:00 AM when my alarm went off, I'd only woken him up. My daughters are supposed to wake up at 6:30 AM so that they can get ready in time. Now they were a half hour late too.

I went upstairs, and woke them up. My older daughter jumped in the shower, and got ready as fast as she could, then hustled out to the bus stop. My younger daughter, while she waited for the older one to get out of the shower, did come downstairs and have some pancakes, but the older one never had any time for them. Once the younger one was ready for school, I took her and dropped her off. She told me thanks for the pancakes, but at this point, I felt totally defeated. The grand plan that I'd hatched up for a breakfast to show them how much I loved them turned out to be a pretty nearly complete failure. I had a bunch of leftover pancakes and syrup though. Maybe...well, maybe we could try again the next day.

So, last night, I double-checked my alarm. And, this morning, when I got my older son up for school at the right time, I headed back downstairs and cooked up another batch of pancakes (the kids had eaten yesterday's pancakes as a snack after school at some point). My son was happy to have them, and didn't even realize that they'd been there for him the day before. He'd been too worried about making the bus to care.

My older daughter got some pancakes too, and the younger on had her second plateful.

So, in the end, everyone got to feel a little bit of Dad's love. But, as usual, it didn't go according to plan, and barely happened at all. Sigh.