By Nici Holt Cline

We love pancakes in our house. Andy is a purist: plain fluffy cakes made from scratch with white flour. I experiment with cornmeal johnnycakes and multi-grain flapjacks. They are sometimes topped with peanut butter, homemade applesauce or whole milk blueberry yogurt. They are always topped with Grade A maple syrup and salted organic butter.

When we were 19 we fell in love over pancakes in Andy’s mom’s kitchen. In Jackson, Wyoming, when we were 22, we ate pancakes on the floor of our tiny apartment with the only two forks we owned on the only two plates we owned on a blanket on the floor. We shared pancakes while camping across the country, through five different rentals in college and, now, we eat pancakes on our table in our home with our kids.

For 13 years Andy and I have always cherished and made time for slow weekend breakfasts together. Since parenthood, we maintain that need but it is, of course, different with syrup clinging to my curls, yogurt painted across the table, sticky fingers touching everything,  potty breaks and bouncing an infant between bites.

Sometime since December 2007, the soft Sunday mornings with fresh, hot coffee and fresh, hot pancakes, NPR lulling us into conversations about last week and next gave way to lively Sunday mornings with coffee that has been reheated seven times, Andy at the stove flipping cakes, balancing a baby on his shoulder, me asking Margot for the 127th time to please not stand on the table and The Hamster Dance twirling us into our day.
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