Box Lunch

What do I miss most about M. Edium's day care, now that he's going to school? It's not knowing the names of every kid he spends his day with. It's not the fact that he was only seven blocks from home as opposed to the current three miles. It's not even the big dog, the absence of whom from M. Edium's daily life has somehow made him more skittish around other dogs. No, it's the fact that the day care lady provided lunch every day.

Now that he's at Montessori school, we have to pack him a lunch four nights a week. And I'm telling you, It's a challenge I'm still adapting to after almost five months. The difficulties are threefold:

1. There's only a limited number of stuff he likes. He limits his "main courses" to chicken nuggets, hot dogs (or corn dogs), PB&J, and mac and cheese. Because of the limited kitchen facilities there, the first two are off the table. The one time we did try to send chicken nuggets, he reported that his teacher "cooked them wrong." And don't even get me started on fruits and veggies.

2. We'd be fine sending him the same thing every day, but when I'm trying to fill that little Wall-E lunch bag in the evening I can't seem to shake the idea that his teachers are looking over my shoulder, silently judging me. Or perhaps even not so silently. One day M. Edium came home and reported that one of his teachers had declared part of his lunch "junk food." Which wouldn't have been so bad, but she was referring to the Goldfish crackers, which were probably the second-most nutritious thing I'd put in there that day.

3. He doesn't eat them anyway. Putting together a lunch in the evening is tedious enough, but when it comes back home untouched, it's downright draining.

And another thing: he had soup at day care all the time. You think we can get him to eat soup at home? Hell no.

And then I see people who are able to do stuff like this every day. I wish I could feel inspired by it, but I only feel mocked.

Part of me is looking forward to when he can start at a school with a hot lunch program. It might be more expensive, as his day care was, but it might almost be worth it.

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Box Lunch

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