So, before I get to the main business of complaining, something that I
notice us English do with aplomb, I thought it pertinent to mention
that I was married on the 6th of May. I now have a husband, my children
are legitimate in the eyes of most things and everything after a wedding
is a blissful anti climax. My children looked amazing, my, now, husband
and I were polished like turds and everything after that was
comparatively excellent. I loved my wedding day and intend to do it
every year for the rest of my life, even, and it most certainly does
mean, if it means bankruptcy.
More importantly, lunch boxes.
So, how we arrived here is fairly convoluted, as most things are with children, but it goes a little something like this.
My eldest, it usually is, second child complains less, is far more robust and if she feels she wants something she usually gets on with it, regardless of the consequences. Back to the eldest. For a while we had been having a bit of a nightmare getting her to go to school, it would start in the morning when she would greet us at Oh Christ hundred am, whingeing about the fact that she didn't want to go to school. Never mind if it wasn't a school day, every day's the same for little people, it would seem (children, not midgets, I know far less about the vertically challenged!) she would let us know before we'd even opened our eyes that she was not happy with us bundling her into the car and leaving her in the care of her nursery.
I shall take this moment to let you all know at this point that her nursery is filled with some of the most lovely people the world has ever known. There is a lady, teacher, in her nursery who calls everyone endearments, even when restraining someone who wants to paint someone else's eyeballs with a chainsaw. True story. There are lambs and sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, chickens, turkeys, peacocks, play grounds, sand pits, woods, rabbits and all sorts of other stuff based at her nursery, the like of which I dream about, let alone other children dream about. My husband (eeeek) and I take it in turns to do pick up and drop off and listen to the hand overs and sneak in at weird times to make sure that they aren't being beaten in secret dungeons whilst we're not there. I know it's not happening. Her nursery is the stuff dreams are made of. How many of us would say "day at nursery you say? No, no, I'd much rather commute, make myself and other people do what they don't want to do in a horrible stark place and then commute home thanks."? It's not going to happen, she has it easy but she doesn't know.
Anyway, despite this resounding logic I decided to probe. I have a rule, ask said child at least three times what the problem is, at various different times and if the answer is the same, more often than not, then I have my answer. I duly followed this logic and back would come the answer "I don't like my hot lunch", "my hot lunch is not nice Mummy", "I like a packed lunch Mummy, jam sandwiches are nicer than hot lunch." I was despondent, I couldn't believe that their a la carte menu was the issue. A couple of weeks passed and it was still the same.
Now, I complain bitterly about my children, but like most, I love the little blighters and I don't want to see them sad or hear them upset, but at the same time, having hot lunches provided by the school and paid for by us was convenient. They were getting a good, healthy and well balanced lunch at least 3 times a week. This meant that we were all happy. But now my little bubble was bursting, my convenient happiness was my eldest's unhappiness, so much so that she didn't give a hoot what Old Macdonald had on his farm, nursery was rubbish and she didn't want to go. So, we arrived at the packed lunch.
It sounds so simple, packed lunch... images of lunch boxes and sandwiches and lovely little drinks and bits and pieces all gathered up in a lovely little lunch box type wrapping. But it's just not that simple. Cooking with various different ingredients in a timely and succinct fashion produces a whole, balanced, nutritious meal of food. You have a cornucopia of balance, nutrition and delicious at your finger tips in your kitchen. You can hide secret carrots and leeks and etc in a cottage pie, broccoli can be disguised as dinosaur trees next to macaroni cheese, as a parent you are in charge and as covert as you need to be in your kitchen preparing food for your unsuspecting offspring. With a packed lunch though, sandwiches disguise nothing, vegetables are vegetables and last night's vegetable laden cottage pie does not travel well or do such amazing things cold, especially when "hot lunches" at school have been vetoed.
Every night, before the girls go to nursery, on the days they go, I wander around my kitchen thinking about new and improved ways to get things into my children. My youngest doesn't like the common or garden sandwich so I have to make deconstructed sandwiches wrapped up as individual offerings. The eldest sees little point in raw vegetables so cucumber is shaped into things that I don't even know existed, we're on our second week and I haven't yet got to carrots, but Peppa Pig, I have it on good authority, cuts a dash in carrot form? Yoghurts and cheese are administered liberally and I scour the supermarket shelves for anything organic and healthy that looks like a sweet. It makes me sweat, shopping takes a decade and I try and put it off until I am literally left looking at a cupboard with nothing but chocolate spread and Haribo in it. They'd judge me, I'd be relegated, they'd know I was an existent parent as opposed to my carefully manufactured Excellent Parent.
I want to go on and on about this hell that I find myself in. My children do understand that the moment they stop eating their nutritious delicious packed lunches, they'll be back on hot lunches before they can blink, even if I have to go to school and whip them up myself! But, ladies and gents, dare I ask, am I just succumbing to the competitive parent in me? Is Nutella on Haribo occasionally such a bad thing? I don't know, I can't answer any of this I have packed lunches to construct, don't I!?
More importantly, lunch boxes.
So, how we arrived here is fairly convoluted, as most things are with children, but it goes a little something like this.
My eldest, it usually is, second child complains less, is far more robust and if she feels she wants something she usually gets on with it, regardless of the consequences. Back to the eldest. For a while we had been having a bit of a nightmare getting her to go to school, it would start in the morning when she would greet us at Oh Christ hundred am, whingeing about the fact that she didn't want to go to school. Never mind if it wasn't a school day, every day's the same for little people, it would seem (children, not midgets, I know far less about the vertically challenged!) she would let us know before we'd even opened our eyes that she was not happy with us bundling her into the car and leaving her in the care of her nursery.
I shall take this moment to let you all know at this point that her nursery is filled with some of the most lovely people the world has ever known. There is a lady, teacher, in her nursery who calls everyone endearments, even when restraining someone who wants to paint someone else's eyeballs with a chainsaw. True story. There are lambs and sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, chickens, turkeys, peacocks, play grounds, sand pits, woods, rabbits and all sorts of other stuff based at her nursery, the like of which I dream about, let alone other children dream about. My husband (eeeek) and I take it in turns to do pick up and drop off and listen to the hand overs and sneak in at weird times to make sure that they aren't being beaten in secret dungeons whilst we're not there. I know it's not happening. Her nursery is the stuff dreams are made of. How many of us would say "day at nursery you say? No, no, I'd much rather commute, make myself and other people do what they don't want to do in a horrible stark place and then commute home thanks."? It's not going to happen, she has it easy but she doesn't know.
Anyway, despite this resounding logic I decided to probe. I have a rule, ask said child at least three times what the problem is, at various different times and if the answer is the same, more often than not, then I have my answer. I duly followed this logic and back would come the answer "I don't like my hot lunch", "my hot lunch is not nice Mummy", "I like a packed lunch Mummy, jam sandwiches are nicer than hot lunch." I was despondent, I couldn't believe that their a la carte menu was the issue. A couple of weeks passed and it was still the same.
Now, I complain bitterly about my children, but like most, I love the little blighters and I don't want to see them sad or hear them upset, but at the same time, having hot lunches provided by the school and paid for by us was convenient. They were getting a good, healthy and well balanced lunch at least 3 times a week. This meant that we were all happy. But now my little bubble was bursting, my convenient happiness was my eldest's unhappiness, so much so that she didn't give a hoot what Old Macdonald had on his farm, nursery was rubbish and she didn't want to go. So, we arrived at the packed lunch.
It sounds so simple, packed lunch... images of lunch boxes and sandwiches and lovely little drinks and bits and pieces all gathered up in a lovely little lunch box type wrapping. But it's just not that simple. Cooking with various different ingredients in a timely and succinct fashion produces a whole, balanced, nutritious meal of food. You have a cornucopia of balance, nutrition and delicious at your finger tips in your kitchen. You can hide secret carrots and leeks and etc in a cottage pie, broccoli can be disguised as dinosaur trees next to macaroni cheese, as a parent you are in charge and as covert as you need to be in your kitchen preparing food for your unsuspecting offspring. With a packed lunch though, sandwiches disguise nothing, vegetables are vegetables and last night's vegetable laden cottage pie does not travel well or do such amazing things cold, especially when "hot lunches" at school have been vetoed.
Every night, before the girls go to nursery, on the days they go, I wander around my kitchen thinking about new and improved ways to get things into my children. My youngest doesn't like the common or garden sandwich so I have to make deconstructed sandwiches wrapped up as individual offerings. The eldest sees little point in raw vegetables so cucumber is shaped into things that I don't even know existed, we're on our second week and I haven't yet got to carrots, but Peppa Pig, I have it on good authority, cuts a dash in carrot form? Yoghurts and cheese are administered liberally and I scour the supermarket shelves for anything organic and healthy that looks like a sweet. It makes me sweat, shopping takes a decade and I try and put it off until I am literally left looking at a cupboard with nothing but chocolate spread and Haribo in it. They'd judge me, I'd be relegated, they'd know I was an existent parent as opposed to my carefully manufactured Excellent Parent.
I want to go on and on about this hell that I find myself in. My children do understand that the moment they stop eating their nutritious delicious packed lunches, they'll be back on hot lunches before they can blink, even if I have to go to school and whip them up myself! But, ladies and gents, dare I ask, am I just succumbing to the competitive parent in me? Is Nutella on Haribo occasionally such a bad thing? I don't know, I can't answer any of this I have packed lunches to construct, don't I!?
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