What's on the lino today?

Today is my first day with both kids in daycare. I'm getting ready to go back to work but needed a couple of weeks to myself before adding another layer of chaos to our lives. As I drove to a coffee date with a friend, I suddenly felt liberated knowing that I didn't have any children with me, then immediately felt guilty for having that thought. I felt deserving of a little time off before going back to work and guilty that I wasn't home scrubbing the kitchen floor like I said I was going to do. Why do women do this to themselves?

On the lino today: wet cereal, water, dry bread.

My son asks for O shaped cereal and then doesn't eat it. He doesn't like going to daycare and stalls at the breakfast table every morning. I beg him, coerce him, cajole him to eat but inevitably he abandons the cereal leaving it to bloat with rice milk. I then put the bowl on the floor so my daughter (thought I was going to say dog?) can eat it. She's one. She has her own special way of eating and sitting on the floor with a spoon and a bowl of hand me down cereal is just one of those ways. She's not so good with the spoon, hence the cereal on the floor.

She's also terrible at drinking water from any vessel. She refuses to drink from a bottle, can drink from a cup, but gets over zealous and most of it ends up on her, and, when drinking from a straw cup, projectile spits water further than a fountain on the Los Vegas strip. What I love is when the water meets the O cereal and just makes a smear on the bottom of my foot when I, yet again, step on one of those mushy rings. Mmm.

At some point as I was making lunches, I handed my daughter some bread. I guess she didn't eat it as it too lay on the floor, desiccated now after a few hours unnoticed. The bread is really good though, we use Michael Smith's Heritage Bread recipe from his cookbook Back to Basics. My husband makes the bread by hand every few days. If you just read that and rolled your eyes or thought "who has time?"…you do. Really. This bread is so good and so easy to make, you'll think driving to the store to get bread is more difficult. Plus, you know what's in it! As I say to my kids…don't doubt it until you try it.

Oh, what will be on the floor tomorrow…only time will tell.