Back to School: Breakfast Time!

I'll admit: this is a weird post to start with since I haven't written anything all summer in forever.  But as I was making my kids' breakfasts this morning I started thinking about how their swim coaches (they were on a swim team again this last summer) reacted when they said what they ate every morning.  The coaches would go down the line and ask each swimmer questions, like "who is your favorite Star Wars character" or "what did you do this weekend".  On more than one morning, they asked the kids what they had for breakfast; often times the kids would answer "cereal" or "pop tarts" or "pancakes".  Then there were my kids.

Nearly every day for breakfast this summer (and for a bulk of the school year last year - and all of the school year so far) the kids ate the same breakfast.  They are creatures of habit and like to know what to expect when it comes to food, among other things.  I always try to make sure they start the day out right with a filling breakfast because I know how important it is for them ... and because I hate it when they get "hangry".

Mollie's breakfast is a homemade oatmeal concoction I started making for Baylor years ago and seem to have finally gotten down to a science.  It has five main ingredients: quick oats, raisins, raw honey, ground cinnamon, and 1% milk.  I start by putting about 3/4 cup oatmeal into a bowl.  In a microwave-safe cup, I heat up some milk (I measured it out today at about 1/3 cup plus 1/4 cup) for 45 seconds on high; if it isn't hot when I hold my hand over it, I will add another 10 seconds.

While the milk is heating, I sprinkle a decent amount of cinnamon over the oats.  This is largely based on personal preference.

Once the milk is hot, I pour some of it into the oats, usually just enough that I start seeing it puddle around the edges.  Hold on to the rest of the milk ... you're going to need that in a minute!

Then I take a soup spoon and dip it into our favorite raw honey, loading it up with as much honey as I can in one dip (not a scoop, mind you - that would be a lot of honey).  I'll use the spoon she's going to eat with to get all the honey I can off the soup spoon.

Next I add a little more milk and stir it all up, and it ends up looking like this:

Finally, I add raisins to the oatmeal.  This is about how much I put in Mollie's bowl; she basically won't eat a bite without a raisin in it, so I really go wild with the raisins for her.

Then, I stir them all in.  My kids like it when I poke all the raisins down into the oatmeal so they are no longer visible and then pretend like we ran out of raisins.  The better I sell it, the more they seem to enjoy it.  I don't really get it, but whatever works, right?!  I also usually add a little extra milk so it's kind of puddled; that way, when she takes forever to eat it it isn't nearly solid by the time she gets to the last of it.

Baylor's breakfast is much more simple; he eats a banana with peanut butter and a yogurt.  Lately we have been enjoying Yoplait Greek 100 yogurt; it's lower in sugar than a lot of other yogurts out there, and it doesn't have any added food coloring.  Plus, both kids have really enjoyed their flavor options.

Edit:  Since I started writing this post back in August, Baylor has also started eating oatmeal every day.  He likes his with way more cinnamon and not quite so much milk compared to his sister, but other than that they are basically the same.

And that's it!  The kids seem to enjoy their respective breakfasts, and it gets them through the morning pretty well.

I hope you have a great start to the school year!

* I have received no payment for endorsing any of these products.  We just really like this stuff and I think posts are more interesting with pictures.