Resto Emerald Park

Or Chez Brown, whatever you want to call it!

Yep, each and every morning, my wife and I open our home restaurant to our three hungry and often temperamental patrons. Why do I call it that? Well, we like to give them choices. So they wander downstairs, or in the case of babi get carried, and sit in their usual seats at the table. The ipads - all fully charged - are there waiting for them. We do limit screen time, but in the mornings it's a nice little diversion for them while they eat their breakfast.

With babi, he usually likes some milk or juice in a bottle. Cups during the rest of the day, but a bottle is safer in the morning as it takes him a while to wake up properly and not spill everything. Then he'll often ask for a chocolate sammich, which is just bread and Nutella or some breakfast bickies. The little bugger doesn't eat the crusts either. So for a while we started chopping them off, but found he still left the outer part behind, as if a crust was still there. So less bread was wasted if we just left the crusts behind to begin with.

With Bdoi, well he usually prefers a juice or a Milo box if we've got them. For him it's almost always breakfast bickies as first option. Interestingly, we used to buy the actual "breakfast biscuits", which claimed to be nutritious etc, but found that compared to the very simple local biscuits, they had far more sugar. So we switched, and everyone seems to like these better anyway. Bdoi often wakes like a bear with a sore head, but with some loving he can frequently be calmed down. I think babi wakes him up most days which doesn't go down well. This morning he was lying in bed with a scowl, so I sat with him and talked about some interesting things, and within a minute or two he was ok.

Lala is the odd one out. Her tastes go from yoghurt to egg soup (half cooked eggs in a bowl with soy and white pepper, yum!), scrambled eggs, strawberry sammich, you name it. She is almost always in good spirits in the morning, bless her.

The reason the whole restaurant theme comes into it is that none of them are ever satisfied with just one course. My wife and I pretty much spend an hour flitting around in the kitchen, chopping fruit, making more sandwiches, cooking eggs, making noodles, you name it. And we serve them all at the table. Sometimes it can be a drag, but I actually enjoy it. It's great to see them all eating a hearty and healthy breakfast, in preparation for their day ahead.

Oh and there's always babi's catch-cry echoing throughout the house at this time of day (frankly all day half the time) - "I want something else!"