I Went Out For Breakfast On Thanksgiving With My Two Kids

a photo from a Thanksgiving several years ago

My husband woke me up this morning and said, “Can you take the family out for breakfast so I can cook our day’s feast without a big breakfast mess in the way?”

I groggily nodded and pulled myself up out of the bed, slapping on some elastic-waisted pants and a purple speckled nursing shirt. You know, a nursing shirt. It has a slice in the middle so you can easily yank your boobs out at the dinner table or wherever need be and provide life sustaining fluids to a baby. I have about 4 of them in various colors and a love/hate relationship with most of them.

But wait — it’s Thanksgiving morning, I reminded us both. What will be open today? “Everything!” he promised.

I Googled and called about 8 different restaurants of lessening seniority until I scraped the barrel, so to speak, landing on a local pancake emporium that I generally tried to avoid. It’s not that it’s bad, per se, but they don’t have the kind of syrup I like (maple; what can I say? I grew up in Maine) and I suspect they use powdered eggs. They typically do have acceptable hot decaf though, so that’s a bonus — said beverage is, for some reason, not always easy to find. Of course, they were open.

I rounded up my two children, a rascally-aged boy and a relatively new baby marking her first Thanksgiving, along with an assortment of this-es and that’s which could prove useful for our journey, including:

• some extra diapers (2)
• markers and paper
• water bottles (2), one for me, one for rascal boy
• blanket for baby
• my purse
• coats hats mittens
• baby carrier

I decided we would walk to the place so we could all preemptively burn off the whatever we were out to eat and so that my rascal would get a few steps into a day which I knew would probably be TV heavy.

My mother-in-law and great grandmother drove my car, as it was 32 degrees out and not everyone was raised in Maine.

We beat them there.