The (Picky) School Lunch Bunch

Since I was still unemployed when the New Year turned (my company re-located to Wisconsin in September), I took it upon myself to resume my morning duties as a mother, which meant I was going to take back AM responsibilities from my own mother. Which meant....I would be getting four girls ready for school--fed, clothed, combed and clean. It also meant I would be packing their school lunches every day.
Though my mother protested and offered incessantly to continue with these morning duties, I felt as if it were something I was missing out on--hanging out with the girls in the morning and sending them all off to school together. Plus, since my severance had run out already, I was forced to pay her less to watch Levi all day, so I felt compelled to relieve her off some of the more tedious responsibilities. Prior to my unemployment, I would drive my oldest daughter to school each morning on my way to work, after we dropped the rest of the crew off at their Nana's (my mom) house, where Kyla picked up her lunchbox.
I had beautiful images in my mind of waking up early with my five beautiful children, enjoying a calm and peaceful morning while we gathered together at the breakfast table, with plenty of time after that to hang out and kick it while they took turns brushing teeth and combing hair.
That image was quickly replaced, however, with reality. The kids wake up especially grumpy (as do Kevin and I), and it takes much prodding to get them out of their respective beds and to the breakfast table, where they whine and complain about what they're going (or not going) to eat. Once there, they spend an exorbitant amount of time hanging out at the breakfast table while I do what has now become the new bane of my existence: packing school lunches.
Oh sure, it sounds easy enough, right? And I got a list from my mom of what each kid takes for lunch every day, which makes grocery shopping simple. Wrong! The girls are a finicky bunch (they got this from me), so boredom quickly set in with the regular items while I struggled to find acceptable replacements to meet their ever-changing tastes and standards. Added to that is the fact that a lot of the work must be completed ahead of time: ice packs must make it into the freezer each night, lunch boxes must be cleaned and sanitized and ziploc bags, as well as the proper pantry and refrigerator items, must be in plentiful supply. The week starts out pretty easy with regard to planning, but usually takes a dramatic turn by Thursday morning when the grapes start wilting and the bananas begin to turn yellow. (This catastrophe can only be pre-empted by a mid-week grocery run). And, let's be frank: a busy mother of five with a boatload of work to do AND a job to hunt for, is too exhausted to make the school-night run, especially after this is coupled with driving to and from the kids' many extracurricular activities.
But the problems do not begin and end with my disorganized habits and hatred of grocery shopping. I cannot stand touching raw meat (like turkey), cold cheese or salty chips and crackers. I despise making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the sheer stickiness involved (though I love cutting them in half to give them a "mother's touch"). And, it takes at least 30 mintues to sleepwalk through the preparation of 4 school lunches. AND, it's usually anybody's guess where the last roll of paper towels has gone (I use these to clean out lunchboxes, wipe my hands after packing icky, sticky food items and for packing inside the lunchbox so my girls can avoid being icky and sticky). This problem is also compounded by the fact that I usually have to hunt for spoons for the girls to use for yogurt and fruit cups, which can only happen after the kids are fed breakfast, which can only happen after I rummage through the dirty dishes in the sink for cereal-suitable bowls or extra large coffee mugs.(The children have been known to eat out of small glasses or other random kitchen oddities on days when the appropriate dish supply is depleted. This is a common phenomenon given that there are seven people eating and snacking all day every day and the fact that Levi has broken a number of our cereal bowls by tossing them across the room at his whim).
Finally, in the event that I am particularly exhausted and we are out of most of the lunch fixings, I have a backup tactic: Buying off the kids! What this means is that I coax them into purchasing a cafeteria lunch (something I do not in general condone for its notoriously high fat, highly-processed content...Kevin and I have read Fast Food Nation and watched Food Inc...which is why I insist on having lunches packed in the first place). The last step in this process, of course, is making sure the lunches make it out of the car and into the school!
And so it came to pass on one recent morning of unpreparedness, when Kyla reminded me she was on a "soft food" diet after her recent tooth excavation, that I had to drop off a special lunch for her at school. And her lunch-time is freakishly early...sometime around 10:30. This made it especially problematic as I had to first drop the kids off at two separate schools, then drive Kevin to work so I could have the car, then drive to Steak and Shake for the special meal of cheese fries and milkshake I had promised, and then rush to school to deliver while the fries were still crispy and the milkshake cold!
I assumed Kevin had Levi dressed and ready to go--packing up the boy is his early morning responsibility--so suffice it to say I was very surprised when we arrived at Kyla's school and found Levi looking like he, too, was unemployed. He was wearing yesterday's shirt, baggy sweatpants, donut glaze-a byproduct of Kevin's coffee craving at the Krispy Kreme donut shop, and no shoes or socks! Mom had the day off, and so apparently Kevin assumed Levi would be returning home with me immediately following the drop-offs. Anyway, upon arrival at Kyla's school, I wriggled out of my bunny fur (if you read my recent blog, you know why I didn't want to be seen in this) and wrapped myself in a long shawl I found on the floor of the truck. I tucked Levi's feet in (he was wrapped around my waist) and made a run for it in the freezing winter rain. My plan was to make a quick and anonymous exit before anyone even knew we were there.
Of course it was just my luck to run into one of the most pulled-together moms I know! Like me, she has four school-age daughters, but she always seems so organized, and her look is flawless. Except, thankfully, for this day. She was rocking a casual look for a change and had her hair pulled back. Our daughters are close friends, and we talked and laughed for a good ten minutes about the chaos of parenting. Turns out, she realy hates making school lunches, too. And, she also resorts to the practice of buying her kids off to avoid packing them some days.
*Sigh.* It is encouraging to occasionally be reminded that we are not the only ones living in the throes of chaos and that every nest has its own birds of appetite to appease.