9 O'Clock on a Friday Morning

Last night, for reasons too complicated to go into, Annalee was told she would have Annie's Pasta for dinner but ended up being offered something else. When I asked what she wanted for breakfast this morning, she didn't hesitate. "Pasta," she said. "Annie's Pasta?" I asked. "Yeah," she said. By the time I had the water on to boil, she was so impatient to eat it that I had to distract her with images of horses I found on Google. Even so, she was pulling at my leg and crying by the time I was through preparing her feast of feasts. She ate a plateful, eating one piece of bowtie pasta at a time with her own fork and taking two at a time from Dad.

I've long thought that breakfast food, particularly sweet breakfast food, is not what the body needs to start the day right. I know, too, that eating breakfast food for dinner from time to time can be fun. Basically, I'm so happy my daughter enjoys as many kinds of food as she does that the last thing I'm going to do is discourage her -- even if it does mean having cheddar-and-broccoli pasta at 9 o'clock on a Friday morning.