Straight From the Bottle

Good for you. You gotta let loose sometimes.  I am sure it was hard, but look what a great memory you created for your family.

Letting go sometimes and doing things the "wrong" way can lead to awesomeness.

Oh hurrah! Pudding for breakfast is never a bad idea. When we were little, my and my sister would eat ambrosia and trifle for breakfast in the days following Christmas. Its definitely one of my favourite traditions now :)

Yay!  Sounds like a great birthday tradition to me.

We do pumpkin pie for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning.

Yay!

We do cake for breakfast the morning after the birthday. Partly to eat up the cake so it's not in the house haunting me with its "too-much-sugar"-ness. And partly because, as you say, lasting family tradition awesomeness.

awesome!!!!! Why the fuck not, right? I mean pancakes, waffles, french toast, cinnamon rolls, donuts, etc. considered breakfast foods but more like dessert anyway. Plus, a little fun never hurt anyone.. same with an occasional hot dog!

basically the same thing people already eat for breakfast. iced scones, muffins, pop tarts. very tasty tasty things.

and one hot dog isn't going to kill the boy. let him eat like a kid from time to time. i bet he was really happy.

My mom was super strict about food and i resented her for it. I just ended up eating it in secret or always going to my friends house to sneak food.

Cake for breakfast sounds awesome! I remember eating cake for breakfast after my wedding. Best damn thing ever!

And btw, my husband and I also have different philosophies on what our daughter eats, but as I told my SIL the other day, "sometimes you just have to relax, one chip at a party won't destroy all the other good choices we make for them the rest of the time."

I am so happy you decided to go with the cake for breakfast.  At first when I was reading this I wanted to scream at you to lighten up a little, in the end you did!  And as long as you teach Fable and Archer the right choices to make surronding their eating habbits the rare hotdog or candy from Hal wont be a big deal because they will have the tools to know to make healthy choices.

In my family, it's always been tradition to eat birthday cake for breakfast. My kids never ask for it at any other time because they KNOW it's a birthday thing and it's just one of the little traditions that makes birthdays extra special.

Funnily enough, when I was tiny, my dad fought with my mother to have cake for breakfast on HIS birthday . . . and they ended up exactly like you and Hal . . . and it became our tradition, which I've obviously carried on to my kids. Your grandbabies will thank you some day!

Hey! Those are my plates!  But seriously, birthday cake for breakfast is the bomb. My mom always made a big cheesecake for my birthday and I would have a leftover piece the next morning for breakfast. Oh to be young again!

I just have to comment about not wanting him to have meat. You should let Hal give him meat. Let Archer decide, when he's old enough, if he wants to be vegetarian or not.  

That post was a smile in a box. Love it. Also- great jacket!

My mother always let me have cake for breakfast on my birthday!  It is a tradition (at 27) that I still continue through today.  I'm pretty sure I'll be letting my kids do it too.  What wonderful memories!

This may show my age, but one of my favorite Cosby episodes was when he gave his kids cake for breakfast and they all went around singing, "Dad is great, he gives us the chocolate cake!"  

We eat pie for breakfast after Thanksgiving.  It is a family tradition.  And personally, I feel like homemade pie or cake made from Sweet Lady Jane (love that place) is wholesome goodness in my book.

Mmmm... cake for breakfast! Great tradition.

Also, fill me in on the beef hot dog freak-out. Are your kids vegetarian? I guess I missed that while reading your blog.

p.s. I'm not judging, just curious.

So, this totally brought tears to my eyes.  Good ones, and that sounds ridiculously dramatic but the whole thing is just so darn sweet.  And because I love those 'organic' 'nothing' moments that suddenly become traditions, or as you said 'the best moment of your life.' More and more I find that the stuff that just 'happens' ends up being some of the most favorite moments.  Also, I have vowed on the spot that birthday cake for breakfast is a future family tradition for us, too.  I just love it.  How could you not?! :)

aww, yay! my parents used to do cake for breakfast too for bdays because my dad worked the graveyard shift, and it was some of my most favorite memories!!! Sitting around the table, just the three of us, in our pjs with cake and milk. And yay for letting go of our own expectations sometimes =)

What a coincidence because I wrote a blog post by the exact same title just yesterday.  I used to think we were the only family that ate birthday cake for breakfast, but it's a fantastic tradition and I'm glad you guys are joining in :)

My dad used to eat leftover cake for breakfast on a fairly regular basis (with 4 kids, there was a birthday every other month!).  But, he had an interesting take on it.  He would put it in a bowl and pour milk over it.  

Sounds kind of ewww.  But, truthfully was no worse than eating a bowl of frosted flakes for breakfast.  At least the cake was almost always scratch made.  We could pronounce all of the ingredients (unlike with Frosted Flakes).

As someone else mentioned, the Bill Cosby "Cake for Breakfast" skit is the best. It will make you feel even better about cake for breakfast.

Oh yay birthday traditions!

We all have cupcakes for breakfast after we sing happy birthday.

We go to Poz's (grandpa) house and eat lunch and open gifts.

For dinner we have the birthday folk's favorite dinner.

Then (if they don't have school the next day) they get to stay up til midnight with mom and dad. If they do have school the next day we wait til the weekend and they get to stay up til midnight.

We have been doing this since my oldest turned 2 (he's now 9) and I so look forward to birthdays.

That last photo of you is so beautiful.

Rebecca, where on earth did you get the jacket/blazer/whatever you are wearing? It is lover-ly.

Hi Rebecca,

Cake for breakfast is such a nice family tradition! I did want to leave a comment though about you and Hal having different opinions as to what kids should eat. Growing up my parents argued constantly about what to feed my little brother and me. Since my dad was a vegetarian and ate all organic, and my mother thought there was nothing wrong with a happy meal every now and again it caused a lot of conflict in our family. It basically led to me having very deep rooted issues with food. If my mom gave me something that was considered junk food I would eat it because duh it was tasty but at the same time I would feel sick and guilty knowing that my father would be mad. Just something to keep in mind!

Yes yes yes!  I love this post!!  Isn't it amazing fantastic awesome how our kids can be so overjoyed by something as simple as cake for breakfast?  I LOVE that!  I have my kids on video one year having cake at 6:30 in the morning...because it was a birthday.  (I also have them on tape eating Peeps at 6:30 the NEXT morning cuz it was Easter.  It was NOT our finest weekend for nutrition.)  Rules are awesome and totally necessary....but isn't it oh-so-fun to leave them behind sometimes?

@amandashea17 -

Why "should" she feed her kids meat if she finds it offensive or unhealthy? Yeesh.

cake for breakfast? it's a no-brainer and a ton of fun. HELLO, BILL COSBY! so glad you let the wall down. your kids will be healthy eaters given what's on their table from day to day and the joy your family has cooking.

The jacket belonged to my mom until she gave it to me. Cute, right!? The lady's got taste!

As far as my crazy foodie ways, I'm not THAT crazy... I hyperbolize, you see. I would never yell at one of my kids for eating "bad" food and when Hal and I argue, its always with good humor. The hot dog did cause several hours of radio silence between us but we dealt with it and all was right as rain by sunset.

I understand that one must tread lightly when it comes to forming healthy eating habits in kids and I don't stop Hal when he feeds the kids goldfish or whatever he brings home in baggies from set. I do EXPLAIN to him later that I'd rather him not bring these things home, etc.

Also, Hal seldom eats meat, never eats pork and occasionally (once every few months) will have beef so it isn't like he eats meat while we do not. We all eat the same foods together.

And yes, cake for breakfast is most excellent! Indeed, indeed!

Oh and I plan to absolutely look up the Bill Cosby "Cake For Breakfast" ep you all mentioned! Never saw it!!!

My family has a little saying... "Wakey, Wakey Time for Cakey."

And we take our cake very seriously.  For breakfast, lunch, and dinner... until the job is done!

I can understand not wanting your children to eat cake, but if you are okay with cake, I don't see how time of day affects the nutritional value. It's just as bad for them at breakfast as after dinner. Maybe they would eat less of it after eating a whole meal, but probably not. And in either case, you get to decide how big a slice you get.

This reasoning does not mean I wouldn't have reacted just the same way, though. :)

Cake, schmake, all I can think of is how BIG Fable looks in those pictures! She's starting to look more little kid than baby, I think.

I hope you're ready for me to say that about your child. Those are big moments, I know. My daughter (10 yo) is about to look more tween than kid, I'm afraid, and my son (8 yo) suddenly has a total big kid vibe that I was NOT ready for...

Love this post!  Birthday cake for breakfast just rocks! We do that too!  As for the healthy food choices, we raised our daughter mostly vegetarian/only organic/only healthful foods the first five years of her life.  After she went off to elementary school and started to gain independence the whole thing just blew up in our faces and now it's a daily battle of "good vs evil" food (she's now eight).  I look at my friends who cared very little about what their kids ate (hot dogs! doritos! twinkies! lollies!) and most of their kids now eat their salad with dinner, will eat sushi next to their pizza and have no food issues.  Our daughter on the other hand, WHOA. Issues on an hourly basis. The forbidden fruit approach completely backfired.   If we ever have more kidletts it's going to be all about balance.  This has been a really hard lesson learned and we now worry she's going to have food issues her whole life.  Grrr... and we thought we were doing the noble and healthy thing.  Not trying to tell you what to do, just sharing our experience.  Love your blog & your writing.  :)

I just introduced my girls to the awesomeness that is Bill Cosby Himself (circa 198-something)- 'Dad is great! Give us chocolate cake!'

If you've never seen it, I highly recommend. I saw it for the first time when I was a kid and thought it was funny, but as a parent it is down right pee-your-pants funny.

just read your comment above-if you can find a copy of Cosby's whole stand up routine (from which the cake bit is taken) get it. You tube only has a few of the bits from it, and some of the funniest bits you can't even find there.

This is great. I had dessert for breakfast on Boxing Day last year - it makes you feel like such a grownup to "allow" yourself this!

Holy moly, precious moments! Will you guys adopt me?

When I was a kid, I was never allowed Kool-Aid. I am not sure why, I was allowed a lot of things I don't regularly give my kids, but Kool-Aid was a big no-no. So, now, probably 50% of my liquid consumption is Kool-Aid.

I'm not saying you should let your kids have everything they want, but you've got the right idea with the cake. It's a special occasion, which calls for special rules. Everyone should get to enjoy that.

Cake for breakfast!  Woo-hoo!  Love traditions like that.

About the hot dogs/cake/real food balance, what works for my family is to have "S" Days.  Saturdays, Sundays, and "Special" days like birthdays and holidays we let the kids have a little junk, like soda, hot dogs, pizza, ice cream.  And the kids also have Birthday Breakfast, where I get them something I ordinarily wouldn't let them touch...we've had Pop Tarts (did you know they actually come in flavors like Milkshake and Sundae) donuts, and some truly horrifying sugar cereals that the kids were curious about because their friends had them.  Once they got them on their birthday breakfast, the kids never asked for them again.  The S day thing works well, because usually if there's a birthday party; it's on an S day, and the kids get their S day fix without any weirdness and without me having to actually buy any junk.

So glad to see that someone already mentioned the classic Cosby stand up routine.  I'm sure you will love it even more than you would have before.  Just thinking of how funny it is makes me remember how my stomache ached from laughing so hard the first time I heard it.  :D

I'm having tiramisu for breakfast now. It pairs to well with coffee.

Nevermind that I'm eating it hunched over and hiding in the kitchen like Golum so my son doesn't find out. Sometimes I just need some damn cake.

Anyway, cake for breakfast...after a birthday...is totally alright. Instead of stress eating like your's truly.

You've got it down pat senorita.

When my kids were little we occasionally had strawberry shortcake for dinner. Fresh summer strawberries. Nice on a hot summer day. Also, we let them have ice cream for dinner in the summer time a few times.

Sounds like a fun tradition to start! I am a little bummed reading Amy G's comment though. I don't have kids yet, but that exactly how I planned to approach the whole food thing. But reading that is a little scary:( I know you need balance in all things, but food is just something that I don't want to compromise on. I just really don't see any need whatsoever for a 2 year old to drink soda for example. But then I don't want them growing up like Jessi up above who drinks kool-aid all the time because she was deprived as a child:) I guess I will have to compromise afterall, at least on some level so that my kids have a healthy attitude toward food and don't feel like they have to sneak stuff the second I turn my back. Yikes! I'm scared to become a mom.

Hey, Adrianne. We didn't have soda in the house growing up and I have NO desire to ever drink soda (the thought of it disgusts me, actually) so I don't think compromise (especially when it comes to a child's health and well-being) is necessarily the answer for everyone. I don't believe in the consumption of factory-farmed meats and most processed foods so why would I feed them to my kids? It would be like raising them Christian, when I am not because some people are. Rebellion happens when one is delusional about rebellion. I am not. I rebelled against plenty in my youth.

We eat sweets after dinner. We occasionally go out for ice cream... I do not keep "all delicious things!" from my kids. I just prefer to offer healthy, unprocessed, environmentally friendly options. This is not to say that everyone should parent this way. This is what works in my house.

Hurrah!

Those little traditions are the things that makes a family, methinks. For the last three generations, we've had a tradition of smearing butter on the birthday "person's" nose so that they might slide through the next year. It was said to be a tradition inherited from Swedish ancestors. No Swede I've ever met knows what the hell I'm talking about when I tell them about this tradition, but it's still something that has sucked in friends and other groups of people, because doesn't everyone need special, weird things? What's more, I think that if a mate refused to let me smear butter on his nose once a year, or smear it on mine, that would be a sure sign that he wasn't for me.

Thanks for the reply, Rebecca! That actually makes me feel so much better and more confident in my stance. I know how important it is and it's seriously the one issue that I really don't want to budge on...but sometimes I worry that I might get over-zealous in my attempts to do good and end up having it backfire on me. I truly admire you for all of your efforts with Archer and Fable. If all parents fed their kids as healthfully as you do, I firmly believe we wouldn't have the childhood obesity, juvenile diabetes, etc rates that we do in this country. So no, I don't think you need to "lighten up." Keep up the good work! And keep posting to inspire the rest of us:)

Adrianne, if I can commment.  I grew up in a house that drank (and still does) way too much soda.  When I went to college I quit cold turkey.  I occasionally have a mexican coke that has sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (we were lucky to live a few years in England so sugar coke was easy to find, but even then I can't finish one on my own.  But I do recommend the Izze sodas you can find at places like Target that are sparkling water and juices.  Tangy and bubbly.  Also, taking pellegrino and mixing in a little orange juice or grape juice is good.

Cake for breakfast aside - DO YOU REALLY LOOK THAT GOOD BY 7:45 AM!?!?? Damn, woman! ;)

Those pics were NOT from cake-for-breakfast day. They were from cake-for-after-fourth-of-july-dinner-evening which came three days later. (Still the same cake, though!)

odd but true: we had my hubby's cake - FOR BREAKFAST - this very morning. his birthday is 7-7 (wanna guess the year?) and despite the fact that my very morning sick self managed to BAKE A CAKE when all food everywhere is awful-sounding, we ate out for dinner and were "too stuffed" to eat cake on the day of, or even the night before, because i'd offered that too, suspecting the dinner might go as it did.

never fear, he said, we'll have cake for breakfast! and we did.

and i was just about to post about it when i wandered over here!

Awwww! That's a freakin' sweet tradition. =P

i would have cried if my husband gave the children meat!  i totally understand how you feel...i'm all about whole foods, mostly vegan, with the occasional "oh what the hell, have the doritos," because you have to choose your battles, right? my husband would feed them whatever if i let him. over the years i have learned to let go a little.  very little.  :)

this is ADORABLE!!!  and for the record?  i am a healthy-foods-lovin' vegetarian lady and yet?  i eat leftover birthday cake with coffee for breakfast EVERY year on the day after my birthday.  sometimes with scrambled eggs AND ICE CREAM TOO.  it's tradition 'round these parts.  (;

happiest of birthdays to hal!  and thanks for another cute post, dear.

cheers!

Howdy, great post - I have a daughter about Fable's age and I try to find that good balance - to not pass on my body/food stuff to her, and so I just try to keep the big picture healthy and allow for flexibility.

That said, I wanted to comment on your GGC post about TV but no comment area seems to be available...?  At any rate, I was going to say that they released all the vintage 70's Sesame Streets on DVD not long ago and that is pretty much all we show our daughter - no more than once a day we have a most excellent cuddle session consisting of Sesame Street and apple juice.  It is the BOMB.  SS is dated but the overall vibe holds up - all about diversity and being a good person and learning, and she loves it.

This is so much like my "brownies for breakfast" motto the morning after making a batch.  Delicious first thing!  I think birthday breakfast cake would be a fantastical tradition, thanks for the idea :-)

P.S. I think a lot of the food issues I grew up with stemmed more from having junk in the house that we weren't "allowed" to eat.  Like it was some grown-up only treat that was occasionally rationed out.  Soooo, I would just gorge myself on the same crappy food when I was at my bff's house (who's mother gave us all we liked).  Yeah, I got fat as a kid, and still have some "eating in secret" issues.  Kinda wished my mother had just taught us about food and why some things can only be eating occasionally, instead of treating it like forbidden fruit.  That, and the fact that she drank, and still drinks, soda all day every day.  Yeah, I caught that habit, and this post reminds me of why I need to break it before Alexa is old enough to realize what I'm putting into my body!  

I agree TOTALLY with the everything-in-moderation argument - with limits. We're vegetarians, because I don't believe it's ethical to eat meat. The kids (who are 9 and 6) know what meat is, and are welcome to eat it when it's available to them, but I will not buy it because of my beliefs. So far, they've not tried it.

Although we eat mostly organic, not processed, etc, we DO eat fun food - really good chocolate or candy, good quality ice cream, and really well made cakes/pastries. As their parent, I'm developing their palate, and I'd rather them choose a really delicious, decadent home made cake than a crappy Ho Ho that doesn't even taste like chocolate. My older daughter has a really strong sweet tooth, but makes whole food choices about satisfying that. Do I restrict a Halloween Snickers? No. Do they LIKE that Snickers? No. We still have an almost full bag of Halloween candy, because it just doesn't taste all that good.

I get really tired of people acting like parents who don't feed their kids crap are denying them a childhood. I ate total crap as a kid, and it certainly didn't enhance my childhood. Knowing what I know, why would I give my kids (the most beloved people in my life) stuff that isn't actually FOOD, and that I wouldn't eat because I think it's unhealthy and kind-of poison?  

Also, I totally love cake in the morning. I make b-day cakes the night before, and make a mini one for breakfast. YAY!

Did you sing the Bill Cosby song?  Dad is GREAT!  Gives us de CHOCOLATE CAKE!

Just read the link to your post from 2008, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and you and I have practically identical diets and views on animal rights (although I disagree when it comes to leather, I still have some leather shoes and bags but will try to buy non-leather whenever possible). I'm also a mostly-vegetarian, seafood eater and occasional turkey eater, depending on where it comes from. I find that both veggies and non-veggies lash out at me when they find I still eat seafood, both telling me it's hypocritical. Frankly, I still think it is, but I'm a professional dancer and need lots of protein to get through the day and sometimes vegetarian sources just aren't enough for me. That being said, I will on occasion eat meat when traveling to another country or eating at someone's house who doesn't know I'm vegetarian, or on holidays (though I'm finding now it's getting harder and harder to digest it and I will sometimes have to um...leave the party for a little while). Love hearing about your eating philosophy, hope to hear more about it soon!

Hi

I think it’s great that you feed your kids so well. And they are obviously thriving.  So cute!

One thing that always sticks in my mind is a post you once wrote about if Archer came home with a big mac wrapper in his bag that you would be more disappointed than if it was a pack of cigarettes. I always though that was one of the craziest statements ever. Then it kinda made me think you are a bit too militant on whole food thing. But then I really hate smoking - i'd be a bit militant on that.

Cake for Breakfast yum!  

M