No doughnuts please

There are many moments where I find myself pausing for a moment to consider if I have been doing a decent job as a parent. I wonder if all that effort put into with reading and spelling lessons, math drills, manners, empathy and everything else have made an impact in their learning. I also wonder if all those good eating habits I have encouraged are sinking in. All these things and many fall into the thoughts of "I hope my kids are really turning out ok."

Since the girls had the day off from school the other day I thought why not go out and do something fun for a change. I wanted to mix it up a little and break from our normal routines. Usually on no school days we stay at home and they spend the day playing with their friends on the block. So out of all the things we could have done (museum, park, hike, long walk, biking, etc.) the one crazy idea I came up with is taking the girls to Dunkin' Donuts for lunch. Sure that sounds like fun. Hey, I would have loved it if my Mom would have done something that crazy, because doughnuts for lunch is never done. I'm excited since the girls always seem pleased to get doughnuts and did I mention the coupons? Oh yeah, I had coupons, coupons for doughnuts and coffee now that is awesome. The nearest DD is about 10 miles away so you can see how this is an epic event for us. Okay maybe not epic but it's 10 miles away no where near any kind of errand that I would normally do. No, going that way is specifically for doughnuts.

We get there and the place is empty. Glorious doughnuts of all sorts are displayed in front of us. Don't you love how DD has that display thing down? The girls stand there indecisive, considering all the choices, as if they would pick anything other than the pink sprinkle doughnuts. After a serious meeting between them they determine that the best ones to pick are....the sprinkled doughnuts. Leah selected the chocolate iced with snowflake sprinkles, Olivia the pink iced with heart sprinkles. With our fabulous selection of doughnuts, my coffee and bagel we were ready to feast.

We crack open the box of doughnuts, they delicately placed their doughnuts in front of them, napkins in laps and juice boxes to the side. Ah, manners they are learning. They take one bite pausing to chew and think, they look at me with mild concern on their faces and ask "Is this our lunch?"

I say with an enthusiastic "Of course, isn't this great?" and they say "Well, we were hoping for a ham sandwich". I nearly choked on my bagel. "What?! A sandwich? You don't want doughnuts?"

"Not really." They looked at me as if this were some sort of trick.

They took a few more small bites and claimed to be full. (Once home they devoured their self made ham sandwiches.) This is what happens when you have done far too well with the parenting thing. Doughnuts for lunch sounded like a great idea at the time. They must have been wondering what has gotten into this Mother, taking them out to eat doughnuts for lunch, how dare she play such trickery on them. I assumed they would be like vultures swooping down on the doughnuts eating them with glee. I never expected to take ten plus the two half eaten, icing licked off doughnuts home. My goofy crazy plan for the day was sabotaged by the internal compass of decent eating habits. The madness of good parenting strikes again.