Cold Pancakes for Breakfast? (Friday Fail)

As a mother of a school-aged child, there are many wonderful things in my life. The hugs, the love, the fun, the laughter, the feeling of watching them go out the door back to school!

Yes I love my son and loved my time with him this summer, but that boy needs some school and I am happy he is back (though they could have started a little later-it’s still so hot here!)

One of the challenges of back to school, besides getting everyone back into a morning routine and getting us all out the door looking halfway presentable, is making sure that lunch is ready to go on days when my son is not having hot lunch. Most days I will pack the snacks that do not need to be refrigerated the night before and then only have to worry about the perishables and the drink. This works very well overall, but one day I decided I wanted to try and make my mornings even more stress-free and decided to make Sean’s ham sandwich the night before and just have it ready in the refrigerator to simply grab and go. This works for us since Sean does not like anything on his sandwiches except meat and bread so there is no worry of mayo making the bread soggy or veggies wilting or leaking.

This would have worked wonderfully, but my refrigerator also held a baggie holding three leftover pancakes from dinner a few nights ago that I just happened to set the ham sandwich next to. And wouldn’t you know it that the next day was one of those (italics) days! We woke up late, nobody wanted to get out of bed, nobody wanted to do anything and one of us had to yell about brushing their teeth (I won’t say who to protect that person’s privacy!)

In a rush I ran to the lunchbox, groped in the refrigerator and grabbed the sandwich, string cheese, drink and a freezer pack from my freezer and shoved it all into Sean’s lunchbox before practically shoving everyone out the door. My day carried on and when I went to get Sean from school the first thing he asked me was, “Why did you pack cold pancakes for my lunch?”

I stared at him and insisted that I had packed ham. We headed home and I went to the refrigerator and peeked inside. I think we can all guess what I found in there. A perfectly made ham sandwich, just waiting to be eaten. At this point I now felt like quite the spacey parent and awful because I was convinced that not only was my son right and I was wrong but he had not had anything for lunch besides cheese and crackers because I was sure he had not eaten cold pancakes without any toppings! I told him if he wanted something to eat I would fix him anything. He just looked at me and told me he was fine and that he does like pancakes, maybe I should not send them for lunch because they were really cold and tasted plain without butter:)

So the next time you space on something don’t feel bad. It happens to us all and for the most part, the worst is that someone has to have some plain, cold pancakes for lunch!