Many mornings at our house are a variation on this general theme:
Mom sleeps until the kids awaken her…”Mom, can you make breakfast? We’re staaaarving!” (Note: they’re not 🙂 )
Mom gets the baby (he’s still a baby to me! 🙂 ) from his crib, gets him settled in his high chair with a drink and some fruit and cheerios, and gets the coffee fixings out: mug, milk, sugar, coffee. The kids protest, “Mom!!!” Mom answers, “After I make a cup of coffee, I’ll get breakfast. In the meantime, everyone please get a clean bowl and spoon from the dishwasher, and have a seat.”
Baby munches his cheerios. Mom fills cappachino machine with fresh water and coffee and sets the cappachino to brewing. What a lovely sound! The kids start banging their bowls with their spoons
Mom’s coffee is ready, milk and sugar are added, and that first lovely sip is an automatic and instant “good morning, you’re awake!”!
After one more sip, the coffee is set aside. Cereal is poured, fruit is distributed, and the kids fall quiet as they munch.
Lunch for Baritone is made, as is a mug of coffee for him to take with him to work. Mom sneaks a few sips of coffee in between working on this.
Two of the kids ask for more cereal (it is poured). The baby threw his blueberries on the floor, so Mom starts to pick them up (and steps on one in the process).
The blueberries (and sticky residue from the smooshed one) are cleaned up. Mom takes another sip of her…now room temperature…coffee.
One more of the kids asks for another bowl of cereal. It is poured.
Baritone’s lunch is nearly packed; his coffee is brewing. Another of the kids asks for more cereal. It is poured. Mom sneaks another sip of … now cold … coffee.
Baritone’s lunch and coffee are ready. The baby is whining to get down (he is let down, two of the kids are asking for help getting dressed, and one of the kids knocked his half finished second bowl of cereal on the floor. Milk is running down the wall by the table. Mom cleans all this up, and helps the two younger ones get dressed.
Baritone heads off to work (after lots of hugs and goodbye daddy’s! and waves). Everyone returns to the house and mom returns to her coffee. It’s still cold, so she zaps it in the microwave. Ahh, much better. She changes the baby’s diaper and gets him dressed, and returns to her coffee which is now … cold. She zaps it again.
Three of the kids are fighting over something in their room. Mom sets her coffee aside and heads off to mitigate.
Mom returns to find her coffee again…cold.
Do you have coffee episodes like this?
Don’t get me wrong – our children are lovely beautiful blessings and I wouldn’t trade mornings like this for anything! 🙂 But I do like my coffee hot, not burn-your-tongue hot, but I do like it fairly hot. And, I’d love for it to stay that way even if I have to stop and take care of one of the kids.
Coffee is only good for so many zaps…and when it’s a cappachino (I brew my coffee by the cup in a capachhino machine…I know, I’m spoiled! It was a Christmas present from Baritone a few years ago 🙂 ) it’s good for even fewer zaps, because each zap makes that lovely foam on top disappear.
What’s a busy mom to do?
This year while brainstorming for Christmas presents for Baritone, a lovely thought came to me: there must be a mug, somewhere, that would keep coffee really nice and hot for more than 10 minutes! Baritone takes coffee with him on his drive to work, and he and I often enjoy a decaf cappachino, or a mug of hot cider, in the evenings…so I knew this was a gift that he would enjoy and benefit from too. He likes to sip his slowly and make it last a long time; I like to drink it while it’s hot so I tend to drink it faster….so a mug that would keep his hot as he slowly sipped, and a mug that would keep mine hot even if i got interrupted, sounded like a gift that would “kill two birds with one stone”.
Enter: the Yeti Rambler
As part of Baritone’s Christmas present, I ended up purchasing a two-pack of these Yeti Rambler mugs. These mugs are amazing. They keep drinks hot (or cold) for a long time (I haven’t timed it so I don’t have exact numbers) but I know now that I can be interrupted and return to find that my coffee is still nice and hot. I was a little unsure about the 10oz capacity (I like more than 10oz of coffee 😉 ) but I am happy to report that they hold more than 10 oz. They’re really more like a 12oz mug. They are a bit pricey, but when you consider your sanity and the cost (monetary and health cost!) of zapping your coffee in the microwave 5 times, these mugs are way worth every penny.
I use this mug every single morning now. And yes it’s a hit with Baritone as well – he can sip his drink slowly, as he likes, and it’ll be hot for the duration.
P.S. I’m not being compensated or paid for this post. I just wanted to share this discovery with other parents out there!
P.P.S. All images are in the public domain, except the Yeti mug image which was taken from the Amazon link.