Sprinkles for Breakfast

On Friendship, Family Dynamics, and the Puzzle We Never Solved

I wrote this post many weeks ago, but somehow it didn’t make it into the rotation until today. This reflection goes back to a summer when close friends moved in with us for six weeks, turning our home into an accidental social experiment. What started with sprinkles-for-breakfast joy quickly revealed just how hard it can be to share space, even with people you love. In the end, it taught me something lasting about family rhythms, boundaries, and the home we’ve built together.

We’re enjoying our last weekend of summer houseguests. This morning, eight of us sat on the back deck, soaking in the first refreshingly cool day of the season. I was about to serve my six-year-old breakfast, a giant slice of carrot cake (please try not to judge), but even before the sugar hit his lips, he was bouncing off the walls as if he’d already eaten the whole thing.

My oldest jumped in with a classic big-brother eye-roll. “It’s the guests,” he said. “He’s always like this when we have people over.”

And he was right. Life had taught me this phenomenon long ago. I first became acutely aware of it in 2012, the year my family and I unknowingly launched an eye-opening accidental social experiment.

Months earlier, a close friend and I had taken our collective four kids, then ages three through seven, to the local indoor pool, desperate to eke some fun out of a long winter day with small children and busy spouses. Somewhere north of our 10,000th lap around the lazy river, she mentioned that the owners of the house she and her husband were renting had decided to sell. With just a few months left in her husband’s postdoc before their move back to Holland, they were likely to be without housing for a short while.

Thinking they’d need a place for a few days, maybe a week, I casually said, “Stay with us! No problem.” The timing was still months away, so I didn’t give it another thought. I didn’t even mention it to my husband.

Flash forward to spring, when my friend reminded me of the offer I’d long forgotten. They were officially out of housing in a matter of weeks. Not forever, but long enough to make things complicated.

When she told me they’d need a place for six weeks, I lost my breath for a moment. She gave me a gracious out, but it didn’t even occur to me to take it. Of course I said yes. I adored this family. I loved their kids. And they were Dutch, which meant they ate Nutella sandwiches with chocolate sprinkles for breakfast. Who wouldn’t want to live with that kind of joy?

So we shuffled bedrooms. We moved our boys in together. We converted the guest room into theirs. And we launched a well-meaning, high-intensity social experiment that nearly wrecked our friendship.

Let’s just say it was harder than I expected. Actually, it was more complicated than that. There were plenty of fun and connected moments over those six weeks. But the lessons came from the friction.

Within hours of our friends’ arrival, my kids were keyed up. So were theirs. The energy in the house was buzzing. Their kids were especially thrilled to be living with me. I am a well-intentioned sucker, a people-pleaser, and for the previous two years I had given them attention and treats without bounds. They weren’t my children, so I saw no harm in spoiling them. But when they moved into our home and expected the same treatment, we were all surprised by my inability to give in the same way.

My kids struggled too. Just as my youngest did this morning, they were energized and off-kilter in the presence of friends. They were acting, performing, trying to find their place in the new configuration.

I didn’t fully see this until Mom Friend and her two kids went out of town for a night. Her husband stayed behind and joined us for dinner. Just one extra adult at the table, and no one was performing. No one was edgy. We slipped back into the rhythm of the family of four we had been before. The shift was so dramatic that our friend commented on it. After the kids went to bed, he told us how pleasant the dinner had been. How well-behaved our kids were. How the conversation flowed.

He had seen something real and intact, the rhythm that belonged to us alone.

That night was a reprieve in the middle of a hard stretch. Over the course of those six weeks, we all struggled. I had long admired my friend’s parenting, but it was very different from ours. They didn’t send their kids to camp, so while ours were out of the house for most of the day, theirs were always around. They didn’t allow screens, while we used them sparingly but strategically. We insisted on balanced food and sitting down together at the table. They didn’t blink when their kids skipped meals because of too many snacks. We did.

None of us were wrong. But we couldn’t find a shared rhythm. And the more we tried to adapt, the more everyone strained under the pressure.

We made it through those weeks, but barely. When they moved out, we didn’t speak for six months. Not intentionally, there was simply an unspoken need for space. Slowly, though, we found our way back. Two years later, they spent their winter break with us. We visited them in Holland. Their oldest stayed with us for ten days while I was pregnant with our youngest. And most recently, though even that was two years ago now, they spent a week with us at the lake house. We remembered how much we loved each other, even if none of us ever want to live together again.

There’s one memory from that time I still think about. Their oldest daughter turned eight while they were staying with us, and for her birthday, her parents gave her a Perplexus, a 3D maze puzzle encased in a clear sphere. For some reason, all four kids became instantly obsessed. But it was her gift. Her prized possession. And for a child temporarily without a home of her own, it meant everything.

The adults tried to manage it. Four parents, each trying to honor one child’s need without alienating the others. That little puzzle became a stand-in for everything we were navigating. When our friends moved out, we bought our kids their own Perplexus. But they almost never touched it. Because it wasn’t about the toy. It was about what it represented. The challenge of sharing space. The effort it takes to care for everyone. The constant negotiation of boundaries, fairness, and need.

This morning, watching my youngest bounce around the deck, I saw it all with fresh eyes. The buzz of guests. The shift in energy. The way each of us subtly adjusts when new people step into the spaces we know best.

I don’t regret saying yes to houseguests. I still love the sprinkles-for-breakfast kind of joy that comes with letting people in. But I also know it can come at a cost. And I want to meet that reality with intention. Because now, more than ever, I see the beauty in what I’ve built with my small family of five. The comfort of our own rhythm. The shared language we’ve developed over years. The ways we have grown into and around each other.

Every family is different. I say that without judgment. But there is no family I would rather live with than my own.

We are far from perfect. We bring our chaos. We make the same mistakes more than once. But we know each other. We see each other. And we are each other’s home. This is the rhythm we’ve built. This is the family we made. Not flawless, but uniquely ours. And there is no home I would rather return to than the one we’ve created together.