Popcorn: It’s What’s for Breakfast

Monday morning as I was just about out the door, I realized that I had yet to give the kids breakfast.  I rushed into the kitchen determined to make a good wholesome breakfast out of something – anything – that we had in the house.

Wait.  Who am I kidding?  Just a few weeks ago, I confessed that I regularly feed my 1 year old potato chips for breakfast because they are the only thing that she: (a) will eat & (b) won’t throw around my car while we’re driving to school.  Although in the comments to that post, another mom stepped forward and agreed with feeding kids pretty much anything that they’ll eat in the morning, most of the moms I relayed the story to offline were mortified at the idea of a one year old eating potato chips for breakfast.  I should also note that my husband is regularly embarrassed over the breakfasts that I give the girls before school.  Oh well.  At least they’re eating?

In fairness, when I walked into the kitchen on Monday morning I really did want to make a wholesome breakfast that they would eat…but that was side tracked when the girls saw the 3 different boxes of popcorn on the counter under the microwave.  Don’t ask me why we have 3 different kids of popcorn in the house right now, we just do.  Ordinarily these boxes aren’t out in the open, but apparently, my husband had made himself a late night snack and not put the boxes back into the cupboard.

“POPCORN!”, Greenleigh screamed.  “Mommy, I want popcorn for breakfast.  Can I have popcorn?”

Which was then immediately followed by shrieks of “PO CORM!  Po Corm!  Po Corm!” from Hazeline.  (As a side note: Seriously, when is this shrieking phase going to stop?)

My gut reaction was to say no.  We didn’t have the time to make it.  It’s not a breakfast food.  What would the daycare people say when my kids strolled in at 9am 9:30am with popcorn in hand?  And popcorn isn’t healthy, right?

So I grabbed the box for the mini-muffins that I normally give Greenleigh for breakfast and went to hand them to her, but as I did so, I happened to catch a glance of the ingredients and nutritional information on the side.  Whoa – 140 calories?  Really?  For 4 tiny muffins?  I don’t really monitor my kids caloric intake (mainly because when they eat, I’m just happy that they’re eating), but suddenly the 100 calorie pack of popcorn didn’t seem like a bad idea.  Hell, even the light butter pack was 20 calories less per serving.  And serving sizes of popcorn are pretty darn big compared to 4 mini muffins.  I started comparing the labels further – fat, saturated fat, carbs, etc. – and the popcorn actually the same or better than the muffins.  Naturally, the sodium was higher, but I decided that I could live with that because, well…it’s popcorn and that’s to be expected.

I looked at the two little upset faces glaring up at me.  “You really want popcorn for breakfast?”, I asked.

“Yes!” they replied, almost in a scary unison.

For 2 minutes, I decided to be the “cool mom”.  What could it hurt?  Can’t be worse than potato chips.  So I put the bag in the microwave and popped up one of the light butter popcorn bags.  A minute later it was done and I dived it up into ziplock bags.  Each of them happily took their ziplock bag and we piled into the car.  It was no doubt the quietest ride to school ever.  They happily chomped on their popcorn.  Not a crumb of it ended up on my floor.  They toted their ziplock bags into school were my judgment was no doubt questioned, but my kids were happy.  They ate their entire breakfast.  And my car was clean.  I chalked it up as a win, win, win.  Yep, 3 wins.  Sometimes I don’t get that many in a week, let alone a day.

And that friends, is how I rationalize feeding my kids popcorn for breakfast.  You know, just in case you were looking for a reason.