Toast, lies and dustbin lids...

Yesterday morning started out in the usual way; This Baby woke up somewhere around 7 o'clock, I stumbled out of bed, groggily went into the kitchen and prepared her morning milk.  I fed it to her and took myself back to bed until 8 o'clock when my alarm officially goes off, not just the "Waaaah Alarm".   Sometimes I can go back to sleep for these few minutes, if I'm particularly pooped, sometimes I catch up on few emails, maybe squeak in a little bit of blog reading.  Before I'd even got out of bed yesterday I'd used up 10% of my (phone) battery.  Not a good omen...

That Baby is usually awake when I go in to get her, we get her dressed and I spray her down with nitty gritty headlice repellent - I bloomin love this stuff, I live in mortal fear of crawly hair monsters, so far with this we've been safe - and we go and get her little sister.  This Baby gets a nice fresh nappy and a nice clean babygro to trash as quickly as humanly possible.

Then we make our merry way downstairs.  I make them both toast.  A whole slice for That Baby as I figure that before school she should have something reasonable in her tummy.  It took me many years to get her to eat a proper breakfast, we'd tried everything from cocoa pops to porridge to pain au chocolat in an effort to persuade her to eat.  She was having none of it!  I'm quite happy for her to have a slice of brown toast now. I told her that her teachers will find out if she hasn't eaten her breakfast an send her back home - something she considers a horrible prospect - she'd miss the fun!

This Baby and I usually share a slice of toast.  I make sandwiches for That Baby to take with her to school (I am useless at making them the night before).  Milkshake gets bunged on the television and I make my way upstairs to get dressed.  We have an agreement that television is ok in the morning as long as it's understood that the beginning of Roary the Racing Car signals the time to stop watching and go and put your school shoes on.  This normally works quite well..  We then get our coats and shoes on, This Baby goes into her buggy or her sling and we walk to school together.  Lovely.

Only yesterday.  Hmmmmm....  I went upstairs to get dressed.  When I came back down That Baby declared that she had "Eaten all her breakfast Mumma" and showed me her empty place.  "Excellent, good girl" said I and I thought no more of it before we all set off.  Until later.  When This Baby and I returned home and I was preparing her porridge I happened to put something in the bin.  Where I spotted half a slice of toast.  Distinctive toast.  Toast cut into pretty little diamond shapes.  Toast that could only possibly have belonged to one person.

The little scamp had sweetly looked me in the eye and told me she'd scoffed the lot, but actually chucked it in the bin.  It's not too much of an issue, but I really hope she isn't doing the same thing with her lunch.  She has a tendency to come home and adopt the same butter wouldn't melt expression and tell me she's eaten every scrap.  Usually when she eats lunch she leaves some form of revolting carnage in the bottom of her pots, breadcrumbs, bits of chicken or kiwi fluff, but not lately.  Lately it's been clean as a whistle pots.  She even started showing me how well she'd done with her lunch in the Post Office last week by whipping out her empty pots, only to be given some bubbles by Roger the Postmaster as a reward for being such a good girl.  She knows how to work things for maximum advantage even at four years old, quite frankly I admire her for it!

Anyway, I haven't raised the subject with her yet and if I'm honest I don't know how to go about it.  How do I impress upon her the importance of eating a good meal and having a fun enough tummy to last the day, without making her ashamed of lying to me?  I know if she gets upset she wont really listen to the point that I need to make, that I need her to understand.  I've asked them to keep an eye on her at school to try and make sure she's eating properly, but I understand that they're busy and then can't focus on just one child.

Oh!  This Mummying business can be a tricky one.  Any advice on what to do would be much appreciated.... :

Actually that's a pancake, but that's what I'm after...