Competitive Parent Confession

It’s Sunday morning which makes me in charge of breakfast. This is typically delegated to Dan during the rest of the week because I am worse than the Walking Dead before coffee. But he is at work so I cheat every weekend and let the kids sit in bed with me and watch cartoons and eat dry cereal until the caffeine kicks into my system, and I return to the world of the living once again.

I asked the kids to get what they wanted for breakfast. Oatmeal. This is good. Then Isaiah got the chocolate syrup from the fridge. This is strange. Thinking he was confused I told him the maple syrup is in the cupboard. He laughed and said “No. Daddy said.” “Daddy said what?” Natalie chimed in, “Daddy made us chocolate oatmeal the other morning and it was GREAT! Will you make it for us?”

Clearly these kids don’t know who they’re talking to. I am not the fun parent. I am the consequence enforcer, the rule maker, the eat-all-of-your-vegetables parent. On Crappy Mohs scale of crunchy mamas I’m like a 7 (<– contains some crude language amidst the hilarity). Keep in mind you only have to fit into 2 of the criteria to move on to the next one, and I did have to Google a few of the descriptions because I’m admittedly crunchy, but I’m not THAT crunchy.

I told the kids there was no way I was putting chocolate syrup in their oatmeal. It wasn’t even chocolate syrup. It was chocolate FLAVORED syrup. And I shot off a sarcastic text to my husband that started with “really? Chocolate syrup and oatmeal?” He LOL’d back at me. Modern parenting at its finest, I tell ya.

I’m typically not a competitive person. Like, not at all. But this really chapped me to I decided to exact some revenge in the form of chocolate oatmeal. Real chocolate oatmeal with real ingredients. Why? Not because I’m not foodie who loves to make elaborate breakfasts for my family complete with pancakes in the shape of the Eiffel Tower with a side of maple deer sausage links that I ground myself. If that’s you – more power to you. But I’m just not like that. Especially in the morning. I’m more like 2-3 word sentences or grunts while I look at my kids through squinted eyes and the hair that didn’t get pulled back into my lumpy ponytail.

No, not because of any of that. It’s because…deep breath…because I needed to be better than Dan at something fun. Cringe. Oh, like you’ve never wanted, just one time, to have your kids like you more than your spouse. Okay, maybe you haven’t. If that’s true, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.

So anyway, I made it.
-Plain oatmeal
-Unsweetened cocoa powder
-Sugar (could use natural, I used white – like it said crunchy, but not THAT crunchy)
-Bananas

And they ate it. And they LOOOoooooOOOOOVED it. They loved it more than Dan’s chocolate-flavored-high-fructose- corn-syrup-polysorbate-60-xanthum-gum-oatmeal. And so I took a video as proof. I sound super arrogant in the video. “Sooo what you’re saying is…Mommy’s is better than Daddy’s.”

The fun-parent-score now stands Dan 7 Trillion and me 3. But when you’re the underdog, those 3 victories come with incredible bragging rights. He will hear about this for years. And I can now go back to telling my kids to pick their clothes off the floor, denying them treats every 22 seconds that they ask for them, and reminding them that snacks are usually fruits and veggies. Because. This morning. I. Won.