Technorati Tags: wordless wednesday

I’ve really been enjoying being able to choose what my daughter has for lunch at school. It’s been a bit of a challenge to my creativity, especially when I didn’t think about it the night before to ensure that basic ingredients would be ready.

Those are the days I resort to chicken soup in a thermos. It works well enough if not ideal.

The simplest way to make providing a healthy lunch easy has been to send leftovers in the thermos or to have something precooked, like pasta, and add veggies and a sauce to it. Very quick and simple pasta salads go over quite well.

I’m definitely not a fan of Lunchables and similar. I know a lot of people like them well enough but they really aren’t to my taste, mostly for nutritional reasons. I’d rather pick better quality meats and cheeses and make something like a Lunchable on my own for far less.

I always include one or two kinds of fresh fruit. Since my daughter is in kindergarten she gets both a snack and lunch. If the fruit is small, two kinds can keep things a little more interesting.

Fresh vegetables work really well for us too. Most common are carrot sticks or slices, but leftover salad, cauliflower and broccoli have gone over quite well on a regular basis. Then again my kids have what I understand to be a rare love of raw vegetables.

On occasion I do include something that is more of a treat, aside from the fruit. The school forbids candy, but we have sent shortcake with berries on top for a really fun dessert.

One of my best purchases was a container that could be split into several small sections. These are available in many forms, but I like the overall function of the Laptop Lunches bag from ReusableBags.com best. It has a lot more room than the little box I have right now, and once my daughter needs something a bit bigger, that’s what I’m getting.

Having a lunchbox that has compartments really does make packing healthy, interesting lunches easier. With my current little box I can pack a sandwich by cutting it in half and stacking it, then using the little compartments for veggies, sliced fruit, crackers or whatever. Or I can put pasta salad or other foods in place of the sandwich. I just love the flexibility.

Things I don’t pack include fruit snacks or rollups, the aforementioned Lunchables or anything else with too much sugar or overly processed. I’ve put a lot of effort in avoiding those at home, so I don’t want to suddenly add them just because my daughter eats lunch at school.

Do any of you have favorite school lunch recipes or ideas?

Technorati Tags: school lunch, lunch ideas, kid lunches, lunch, laptop lunches, healthy food

It’s just a couple days before Halloween, and time to think about what to do with all that Halloween candy. You know what the kids will want to do with it, and it’s up to the parents to decide whether or not to let them do it.

Many, perhaps most kids will want to just gorge on the candy, and that may not be the worst of ideas. It gets rid of the candy quickly. A single day of eating a ton of candy is not going to produce instant cavities. You can work on control later… say the next day or two, at which point it really makes more sense to limit candy consumption.

Of course, even letting them overdo should be within limits. You don’t want vomiting children if you don’t have to.

I’m really not the type of mom who throws the Halloween candy out. So far we just put it in a single bag for everyone to share, but as the kids get older and more possessive I suspect that won’t work. Changing tactics as kids get older is often necessary.

I remember my sisters and I going through our bags in detail, figuring out what to trade and what to hide. We had some pretty good hiding spots for candy, and it was pretty much a competition to see who could have a stash of Halloween candy the longest.

I think it’s important for parents to remember how much they enjoyed their Halloween candy as a kid and to not spoil it for their own children. Combine good habits to balance the candy intake with healthier foods, and proper dental care, and the short term added candy intake shouldn’t be a big problem.

Technorati Tags: halloween, trick or treat, halloween candy

I won’t let them win.

I’m watching my sister’s two daughters today so that my sister and her husband can go clean their house of ash and such from the fires. It’s been a crazy day.

How crazy?

Crazy enough that I finally decided to kick off my In Mother Words website so that I could start sharing stories. And that was before the water fight in the garage.

I hope to get a lot of other people sharing stories about their kids and their experiences as parents, always on the humorous side. I like getting time to share the laughs.

Technorati Tags: parenting humor, kids, children, humor

Well, not so much my train of thought as my overall work efforts. After spending several days evacuated to my mother’s house it’s a challenge getting myself focused again.

Besides, Halloween is coming and I still haven’t made my son’s costume. But I did get a start last night. He finally informed me he wants to be a blue dragon. Of course the stores only have red dragon costumes.

I’m up for the challenge, though. I bought a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants for the costume, and I’m making a tail and spikes for him out of scrap material. The may not be too hard, just a bit time consuming. And it’s a nice way to keep my hands busy whenever I watch television.

We haven’t even unpacked fully yet. Did bring things in from the car at least, but not all the clothes are back in the closets or other stuff fully put away. After all that stress the big thing I’ve wanted to do these past couple days is relax.

Today I’m determined to stop that and get some actual serious work done. There’s enough I meant to get done before the fires started, and now I really need to get going on all that.