When I was growing up, Saturday morning was my favorite time of the week. I woke up before everyone else and had the house, and the TV, to myself, watching cartoons for an hour or two before the rest of my family ambled down for breakfast. I used to make a list the night before of all the cartoons I would watch, consulting the TV section from the paper starting at 6 am, just in case I happened to wake up that early, and going until 12, just in case everyone slept in that long. It never happened, but I liked to dream. Of course, now that I think about it, this may have been the beginning of my list making habits.
The other thing I loved about Saturday mornings was that it gave me a chance now and then to make breakfast in bed for my parents. Yes, yes, it sounds very thoughtful of me and luxurious for them, but I'm not sure they thought of it quite that way. For one thing, I wasn't allowed to use the stove (naturally) didn't understand the coffee maker and was pretty much limited to what I could make with a toaster or pull out of the fridge. This meant that there was a lot of cinnamon toast and "coffee" made with cold water and coffee grounds. Yum, right? But my parents, being my parents, dutifully choked down my early cooking attempts, or maybe then dumped the coffee into a plant while I wasn't looking, either way, I thought they loved it, so I kept at it.
My kids, for the most part, just aren't the go downstairs make yourself breakfast and watch TV kind of children. I've tried, really I have, but they usually feel the need to wake us up and tell us that they are awake and hungry and want to watch TV. They'll do it themselves, but they have to make sure they wake us all the way up first. Which, you know, is nice and all, but it would be nicer to get to sleep in.
So Saturday morning, when they let us sleep in a whole extra hour (heaven) and then came up to inform us that breakfast was ready, I figured I was in for some awful cold coffee payback time. However, unlike his mother who still can't really work a normal coffee maker, Briton had been paying attention to our years of french press coffee production and had actually made coffee. Weak coffee, but coffee none the less. He had also made a pot of tea and had sugared (liberally, very very liberally) a half of a grapefruit for me and loaded up a bowl of cereal and chocolate chips (a lot of chocolate chips) for his dad.On the off chance that he decides to make this a regular thing, and it is in his genes to do it, somewhere, deep down, oh please let us get some nice sleeping in days, I taught him how to measure the coffee grounds and how much water to pour out of the electric kettle. Of course, the next morning was back to normal with me waking up nose to nose with Evie saying "MOM! I NEED some applesauce!" But, you know, it could happen.