Friday, January 24, 2020A Mouth Full of Words
A lot of words fall out of Mila's mouth. Right now, a bunch of them are about how it's nearly the 100th day of school. Apparently that's an exciting milestone if you're five years old. Like, SO exciting. I would agree with the kid, but it's a constant reminder that it took me nearly 100 days to figure out the lunch thing.
Ooooof ... the lunch thing.
Mila kicked off the year spending a fortune on school lunches. As in, she was going through $50 every two weeks. Given that nothing is more than $4, DOUBLE-YOU-TEE-EFF, KID? It turned out that she buying a regular lunch and then buying alllll of the snacks because she was still hungry because that lunch? Hahahahaha! She wasn't eating the lunches she bought.
It took a while to untangle the whole thing, but it turned out that Mila's lunch break is a whopping 20 minutes long. By the time she finished standing in line to buy a lunch, she only had about 10 minutes to eat and it takes that kid at least ten minutes to sit her butt in a chair. I can't imagine how bad it is when she's surrounded by friends. I mean, she is still working on eating the dinner I gave her two days ago because SQUIRREL APPLE SNOOZE FLURP.
She is so easily distracted.
And the slowest eater ever.
Because DISTRACTED.
So we put an end to the buying lunch thing. Except, I am not a competent lunch packer. At all. I have never ever managed to pack my own lunch reliably and packing for my kids? Pshaw. That's hilarious!
I taught Mila to pack her own lunch.
It started out with her packing a giant pile of garbage and I had to make some corrections, but we're now about two weeks into the kid managing to pack her lunch somewhat reasonably well. I've had to adjust my grocery shopping strategy and buy a lot more pre-packaged nonsense, but WORTH IT.
Three nights in a row I have told Mila to go pack her lunch AND SHE HAS. CORRECTLY. REASONABLY. There was only one dessert, even! It's pure magic. My kindergartener packs her lunch! All by herself!
For what it's worth, I'm not saying that the kid is managing to eat an actual lunch every day, but she is managing to have a bag of food with her on the bus after school so that she can eat a late lunch. That's a victory, right? RIGHT.
