Waning...

We’re at T-minus one week and counting before school begins, so this week I am gearing up for another school year.  R will be going into the 2nd grade and G will be completely his last year of preschool, which leads me to write, as any parent will tell you with each year’s school milestones, “how can they possibly be this old already?”

R will have the same teacher as he had last year, as his school loops grades.  He is thrilled to return to the same classroom with the same teacher and the same school friends.  He’s already looking forward to school:  riding the bus, recess, oh, and perhaps a little learning too.

G is in a pre-K program this year, a four-morning-a-week preschool, in the same pre-K class that R attended when he was 4 and with two of R’s former teachers.  He will be in the “big kid” class of the preschool and pretty much thinks he will be hot stuff.

With R eating lunch at school every day and G staying for his school’s Lunch Bunch at least once a week, gearing up for school means also bracing myself for the return of packing school lunches.  As much as I love to cook and create in the kitchen, I would be lying if I said I was looking forward to making school lunches again.

School lunches are a day in, day out quest to balance healthiness with a balanced meal with a little dose of fun to make sure it is eaten.  Packing G’s lunches are a piece of cake.  He only eats once or twice a week at school, and he loves sandwiches, cut up vegetables, fruit and pretty much anything I put in his lunch bag.  R is a great eater at home, but as I have shared on this blog last year, getting him to eat a full lunch has been a challenge at best.

After last school year, our best theory is that R’s lunchroom is too chaotic, loud and distracting in order for him to really hunker down and eat in the mere 10 minutes he is required (he can take up to one hour, but with kids able to begin recess after only 10 minutes of eating, you can imagine how many kids are left at the lunch room table once the avalanche of kids to the playground begins).  We were able to come up with a rotation of about 5 sure-fire main dishes he would eat about 75% of the time.  Fruit was usually eaten well too, and of course, any chip or treat included was never left behind.

To gear up for the year literally, I bought another Thermos Funtainer since these were the best way to pack something for R that he would eat.  In his defense, R loves leftovers, so things like soup, chili, casseroles and pasta were big hits for the lunchroom; the Funtainer kept these warm wonderfully.

G is requesting a new lunchbox this year but I told him he will get a new one for 1st grade.  In our school system kindergarten is half day, and I am guessing whatever lunch box he picks out now, at age 4, would be very different than what he would want as a 6 ½ year old/1st grader.  R is happily using his Star Wars lunchbox again.

The last thing I am doing to prepare for school lunch season is to slowly shift our eating schedule to help get us ready for the school year.  Ever since school let out, we’ve been starting our day later, sleeping in and keeping a slow pace most mornings.  Breakfast is sometimes around 9am, so lunch is usually late too.  Soon, R will have to rise early to get to the bus by 7:30, with lunch at around 11am.  As much as I hate to lose the slow, late morning routine, later this week we’ll begin going to bed and rising early and eating breakfast and lunch earlier too.

Before we know it, we’ll be packing lunches and waving good-bye to our 2nd grader on the bus.

Life is sweet (and goes by so fast!),
SPC