Sunday was going to be a fantastic day — I was sure of it. Unlike so many weekend days, we didn’t have a single plan. There were no dreadful birthday parties and no endless sports matches. No cutthroat chess tournaments and no hectic lunch plans. The gang could sleep late and stay in pajamas. It was going to be a supremely lazy day, and I was looking forward to it.

The brood slowly emerged from their bedrooms one by one, collapsing in different parts of the living room. In their pajamas, with tousled hair, I could still see the sleepiness on their faces and in their bodies. As I sipped a steaming cup of coffee, happy that baby Nate was back asleep, I began to make the family a breakfast fit for a lazy Sunday — French toast, hot chocolate with marshmallows, and all sorts of berries.

“Come, guys,” I singsonged. “Come sit down and eat breakfast. I have French toast and hot chocolate.” What an all-too-rare chance to talk leisurely and be together, I marveled.

No one moved.

“I have marshmallows, too.”

Some looked up, but still, no one moved.

Stop being a pain, I thought to myself. Just let them be. Who cares if the French toast gets dry, I thought, as I wrapped it up and stuck it in the oven. I flipped through the newspaper, savoring the coffee.

“Let’s do a puzzle,” I said as I grabbed a box with 100 pieces that I thought would be fun for all of us to do together. Two of the four came over. We separated the edges from the inside pieces, and it wasn’t too long before we had the outside completed. But then Kira, 5, by accident, broke the puzzle into several pieces. And before I knew it, Josh, 7, had pinched her, and she was howling at the top of her lungs. “I didn’t mean to do it,” she wailed. Jacob, the oldest, who was still lying exactly where he had plopped himself 45 minutes before, snickered. Just one little snicker, but enough that Josh, from across the room, snickered back.

“They’re laughing at me,” Kira moaned.

The boys laughed some more. Kira howled some more. And Talia, 3, voiced some sort of incomprehensible defense of her sister.

“Stop,” I demanded. “The puzzle is almost back together. Let’s see if we can finish it,” I cajoled. My perfect lazy morning was not going down in flames over a puzzle.

But Kira didn’t stop crying, and it didn’t help when Josh slyly brushed past her and pinched her, ever so lightly, again.

The problem was not Josh’s pinch or Kira’s reaction — neither is a noteworthy event in my family. Let’s face it: The problem was my absurd fantasy of experiencing a perfect lazy Sunday morning — as if such a thing existed outside of sitcom television from the 1950s. I am not the only one with recurring fantasies that involve unattainable family moments straight out of “Leave It to Beaver.”

“Last week I was so looking forward to a relaxing dinner on Friday night,” a mother of three told me. “Often we have another family or my in-laws over on a Friday, but it was just going to be the five of us. I made everyone’s favorite dishes and we were just beginning to eat when my oldest son, who is 14, commented that the soup was gross,” she said.

“Well, I just lost it,” she admitted to me. “I made him get up from the table and not come back into the room until we were finished. Of course, everyone else felt bad for him, and the dinner was depressing, and I felt guilty. I hate it when I overreact, but I also hate it when my kids act like ungrateful brats.”

One father of two teenagers told me that he thinks he ruined his family’s spring vacation by having expectations that were too high. “For the first time, we took the kids to Europe,” he said. “We visited museums and had great meals. Now when I look back on the trip and my children’s behavior, I would say that they were pretty well-behaved and pretty appreciative. But at the time, I thought they were spoiled rotten.

“Of course, only now can I see that I had unrealistic expectations of the trip,” he added. “My wife and I had waited years to take them on this kind of trip. We wanted them to get the most out of it. And so every day, I tried to ensure they were getting the richest experience possible. I guess this kind of pressure can ruin a trip,” he said.

The perennial rub of parenting is that we must keep our expectations of our children impossibly high while at the same time tolerating all sorts of lows. The gap between our ideal family dinner or vacation and the reality can occasionally seem too vast to endure for one more meal or one more holiday.

But then, when we least expect it, children find a way to remind us why we must keep the bar so high. “Can we talk about the Olympic flame?” Jacob asked me out of the blue. Josh looked up and Kira stopped crying. “Why are people trying to put it out?” he asked.

And then for nearly an hour, we discussed the situation in Tibet, the Olympics in Beijing, and whether or not it made sense for countries to boycott the 2008 games.

Who cares if no one ever ate the French toast?

sarasberman@aol.com