« Mommy? Mom? Mom? Mama? Mommy? Mom? | Home

September 12, 2012

So I packed her lunch (and then ruined her life)

It's back to school, which means back to busy mornings, back to endless filling out of forms, back to navigating the murky waters of tiny grade school friendships.

And back to packing lunches.

When Mads started Kindergarten last year I was dead set on being the mom who packs the cool school lunches. I'm not quite sure why, seeing as I can barely manage to be the mom who doesn't have her T-shirt on backwards, but for whatever reason this was my goal.

So I set out and invested too much money in cute princess party picks, heart-shaped silicone muffin liners, rainbow-colored Bento box containers. And not to brag or anything, but in those first few weeks I did pretty good. I got up extra early and packed - no, created - gorgeous little lunches that covered the nutritional bases all the while being the food equivalent of a big ol' bear hug. Lunches that oozed love like a broken yogurt tube. Lunches sort of, almost, but not quite as beautiful as these ones:

Okay, so they were actually nowhere near that gorgeous, but whatever. The point here is that I tried.

But over time the Bento boxes gave way to Zip Loc bags, the cookie-cutter sandwich shapes to plain old triangles. Because as the weeks passed and these lunches that I poured blood, sweat and tears into (not literally - that would be gross) came back completely uneaten I had an epiphany:

It doesn't matter if her cheese is shaped like a flower or a ladybug or a fairy riding sidesaddle on the back of a freaking unicorn, she isn't going to eat it. At best she'll take three or four bites, smush it back into her Disney lunch bag and call it a day. Who wants to eat when you could be running up and down the grassy hill behind the school 412 times? Not her.

So it's back to lunches of tuna sandwiches and thermoses full of plain buttered noodles.

But then, not too long ago as I tucked Mads into bed at night, there was this:

Mads: "Is it school tomorrow?"
Me: "Yup!"
Mads: "Aawwww. I don't want to go to school."
Me (envisioning my baby girl at the hands of some school yard bully): "What do you mean? I thought you liked school? You have a nice teacher and all your friends..."
Mads: "I know, but I don't like lunch time."
Me (*RED ALERT* *RED ALERT*): "What happens at lunch time that you don't like?"
Mads: "Well, sometimes you give me the sandwich with the meat in it that I don't like..."
Me: "The sandwich? Is there anything else, though, something you don't like about school?"
Mads: "No. I just don't like that kind of meat."
Me: "So... you don't want to go to school anymore because sometimes I pack you a ham sandwich?"
Mads: "Yeah. Ava's mom gives her chicken strips. How come I can't have chicken strips?"
Me: "Good night, Mads."

Lunch box pics from Wendolonia.com

September 12, 2012 | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e54f9020138833017c31cc3242970b

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference So I packed her lunch (and then ruined her life):

Comments

Great back-to-lunches post! I almost had a heart attack when I saw lunch pics...and then was incredibly relieved when they turned out to be...not yours. Whew! I used the Goodbyn lunch containers last year and they're still in use this year. They're great for going 'litterless', but there's no way in hell I'd be cutting out little shapes. There are just too many things I'd rather be doing...like zoning out and watching 'The Bachelor.'

Posted by: Stacy | Sep 15, 2012 1:45:46 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

Subscribe in a reader