Lunch Problems Here

Okay, time for a little light-hearted humor for a change. I didn't mean to get so serious over the last week or so.

My 3-yr. old, Daelyn, loves macaroni and cheese. Every single day for months on end, he would request it for lunch. Sometimes, he'd even ask for it for dinner or breakfast. At least twice a week, I'd cut him off and make something else, like a grilled cheese sandwich or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. On busy days, I found it nearly impossible to cook a box of macaroni and cheese for him. Some days, it'll be noon before I stop my chores long enough to think about lunch, and Daelyn needs to be down for his nap by 12:30 if he's going to be up in time for us to pick up the other two from school at 3:00.

For those tight days, Don found a great alternative - Easy Mac. Easy Mac is a single serving in a pouch that you can make in the microwave. Two pouches are attached by a perforation. One has the macaroni, to which you add water and pop in the micro for 4 1/2 minutes, and the other has the powdered cheese sauce that you add when the macaroni is cooked. All-in-all, in 5 minutes, you have a bowl of tasty, simple macaroni and cheese.

Over time, Daelyn discovered he liked Easy Mac even better than the boxed type, so we practically stopped buying the cheap, generic brands of boxed mac-n-cheese and Don discovered generic Easy Mac. For at least 6 months, Daelyn ate his and six or seven other people's share of store-brand Easy Mac.

One day, while at the grocery store together, Don showed Daelyn a new type of boxed mac-n-cheese - Spider Man. They also sell Sponge Bob and numerous other cartoon characters, all represented in pasta. They came home with about 6 boxes of the old-fashioned, boxed stuff. Don would make it for the kids on weekends, when he was home and there was more time to devote to cooking lunch and naps could be postponed.

And thus life went, until, one afternoon, in a rush to put lunch on the table, I asked Daelyn what he wanted, knowing full well in advance what the answer would be.

"Hard Mac, Mama," he replied.

Pretty sharp for a 3-yr. old. I guess I've complained enough that the boxed stuff is hard or he's learned that hard is the opposite of easy. In any case, he has now outgrown Easy Mac and we have a year's supply rotting in the cabinet.

Dane, on the other hand, likes sandwiches. At least, he did until we ran out of Canadian honey. You may not have realized that Canadian honey is different from American honey, but I can assure you, that's the truth. My Aunt and her boyfriend own appiaries in Canada. Fairly often, she sends large containers of honey to my mother to be distributed to us kids. My children love this honey. It's practically solid, milky white, and not as sweet as American honey. It has a mild flavor, stays where put on the bread, and doesn't overpower the peanut butter. My children have gotten so used to Canadian honey that we had a problem the other day when we ran out.

Dane: "Mama, my sandwich tasted funny today, so I didn't eat it."

Me: "Tasted funny? What do you mean, 'tasted funny'?"

Dane: "I don't know. It just didn't taste right. It tasted like something was wrong with it."

Me: "Was it the honey? You know, we ran out of Canadian honey and I had to use American
honey. Was that what it was, son?"

Dane: "I don't know, Mama. It just tasted wierd, and I didn't like it."

I smelled his whole sandwich, with one small bite missing off the edge. It smelled fine. I tasted a little. It tasted fine. Nothing wrong with this sandwich.

Me: "Dane, there's nothing wrong with this sandwich. You need to eat it."

Dane: "Oh. Okay." He gobbled down his sandwich for his after-school snack. When it was all done, he commented, "Mama, I don't like that honey. Can we get some more Canadian honey."

I guess it's time to write to Aunt Bea and see if we can buy some honey from her. My children are picky.

Another problem I have with lunches is that everyone wants something different. Deanna has special bread that's high fiber. It costs a fortune, so I try not to use it for the boys, so everyone's bread is different. Deanna likes crunchy peanut butter (which has more fiber), but Dane can't handle the little chunks of peanuts and Daelyn accumulates the chunks in his cheek like a squirrel and then spits them out, so the boys have to have smooth peanut butter.

Deanna likes jelly, but Dane has to have honey (Canadian, as we've already seen). Daelyn doesn't have a set standard. Some days he wants honey, some days, jelly. Then there's the issue of what kind of jelly. Deanna hates strawberries, so strawberry jelly is out. She likes grape, but no one else seems to. Deanna's favorite is red currant (which costs more than our house) or red raspberry, which has seeds and Dane and Daelyn won't eat.

In addition to the sandwich issue, we're trying to help Deanna lose weight, so we use fat free chips and low calorie sweets in her lunches. Dane, on the other hand, is so slim, he looks sickly and we can't keep trousers on his hips as it is, so he needs more fat and calories (apparently, he burns them up and Deanna doesn't). Thus, every other aspect of their lunches is different.

Now, to the drinks. Deanna has her drink medicine in milk every morning. She seldom finishes it all, so we send it along to school in her thermos. When Dane started school, his grandparents gave him this cool SpiderMan lunchbox with a thermos. We attempted milk in his thermos for the first week and then abandoned thermos' for him. It appears he is incapable of putting the cap with the seal on the thermos after use. He'd just screw on the cup and, by the time he got home, his backpack would be leaking milk. All his school work would be thoroughly soaked, and I got tired of washing out his backpack daily. He now gets a juice box every day.

Thank God the children are out on their Christmas break and I have a break from lunches for two weeks. Perhaps by the time they return, I'll have figured this out and come up with a lunch plan that doesn't take me two hours each night to prepare.