I am starting to feel like I’m getting in a rut with the lunches I’ve been sending off to preschool. I feel like I do OK with the different fruits, veggies and starches, but I seem to send the same proteins over and over and over. How many times have you all had to look at salami, a sausage or tofu chunks? I was sending PB&J too, but now Wyatt has decided that he doesn’t like sandwiches, so I’ve mostly pulled them from my repetoire. Anyone have any good ideas for proteins to try him out on? I’m all ears.

I made all of Tuesday’s bento the night before because I had a dentist appointment first thing in the morning. I sent: pineapple chunks, zucchini-date bread (from Trader Joe’s), leftover rice and peas from dinner molded into teddy bear and heart shapes and salami roll-ups. He ate everything but the rice which is a little strange because he had three servings at dinner on Monday night. Maybe he doesn’t like the texture of the cold rice though. Or maybe all the other stuff filled him up.

Wednesday I sent more pineapple and zucchini bread, tomatoes with a little strawberry balsamic vinegar on them and baked teriyaki tofu strips.

I thought that Thursday’s bento was very pretty. I sent some peach slices, peas, a mini-blueberry muffin that I pulled out of the freezer and the perpetual favorite, salami. I hope I’m not clogging this kid’s arteries before he even hits age four…

Friday’s lunch has a blueberry cereal bar (behind the divider), leftover cooked carrots from last night’s dinner and some ranch dip (in the pink container), a chicken apple sausage, some cheese stars for decoration and some sliced havarti cheese that I put in to stabilize everything else.

A couple of people have noticed that I’ve been using some new bento boxes for the last month or so, so I thought I’d show what they look like with the lid on.  I got two new boxes with lids that lock on at the Ichiban Kan store by my house. I like these maybe a bit more than the other boxes I have because they hold a bit more and it’s also easier to rearrange things in the boxes when I need to.

I also wanted to show a picture of the drink boxes that we use. These are called Litterless Juice Boxes and they’re made by Rubbermaid. They’re the same size as a disposable juice box and you can just pour juice, milk or water into them. I really like them because it’s much cheaper to buy a big carton of juice than to buy a bunch of little boxes every week. I also can dillute the juice with water a bit so it’s not so sugary. And finally, it significantly cuts back on the amount of waste that’s generated by Wyatt’s daily lunches (though I do put a fresh straw in the juice box every day because I’m afraid of bacteria building up in the “permanent” straw that comes with the boxes).

My latest craft project was to make a bunch of swaddling blankets for the new baby. When Wyatt was teeny-tiny, the only way he would sleep was if he was being held, and even then he never slept more than three hours at a time.  I’m all for attachment parenting and co-sleeping, but sitting up in bed all night holding a baby is not exactly conducive to getting a good night’s sleep. Swaddling saved me from going insane. The very first time I swaddled Wyatt properly, he slept for five hours straight in his co-sleeper which meant that I slept for five hours straight lying down in bed. When I woke up, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It was the most sleep I’d had in a month. I was so energized, I felt like I could run a marathon.

Hmmmm…OK…maybe not a marathon.

I felt like I could walk around the block.

Anyway, I wanted to be sure we had a good supply of swaddling blankets for the new baby, so the other day I went over to the new fabric store by our house and I bought three 42 inch squares of flannel. I know I could have just washed the fabric and used the blankets without doing anything to them, but I wanted a finished edge to keep the cloth from fraying.

I didn’t do anything complicated at all to finish up the edges. I just finger folded each edge over by a quarter of an inch and stitched along all four sides. Then I folded each edge over again and did another pass over them with the sewing machine. Easy peasy.

I’ve been collecting some good links lately and thought I would share them with you, Internet.

Craft Blog — I feel pretty neutral about Craft magazine — don’t love it, don’t hate it — but I looooove their blog. They always have great, interesting, amusing projects and post a bunch every day.

Bembo’s Zoo — Great site for kids. Animals and letters combine in a cool visual tool.

This Tom Selleck Cake — I’d like a hunk of cake like this!

Where the Hell is Matt — his videos rock. I find it very difficult to watch these without tearing up at the thought of how amazing this world is. And we’re going to vacation in Vallejo this summer….

Japanese Paper Dioramas — I keep telling myself, “I don’t have time for another hobby. I don’t have time for another hobby.” So far I’ve resisted.

The Big Picture — amazing photos updated every few days.

Classic Photos recreated in Legos — click through to the photo page to get links to the originals.

One of the most common comments I get when people find out that I make Wyatt bento boxes for preschool is, “Wow! You have too much time on your hands.” (Or sometimes I get the more polite, “I don’t know where you find the time.”)

The fact is, I actually don’t have too much time on my hands. I work more than 40 hours at my job most weeks. I have a family and a house to care for. The dishwasher always needs to be emptied and there is always laundry to be folded, hung out to dry, or both. I also try to shower and brush my hair on a regular basis.

My kid needs to eat lunch every day though and I’ve chosen to make it a priority to fix him a nutritious meal and present it in an attractive way. I think it’s fun and it really doesn’t take me very much longer to make him a bento box vs. putting everything in ziplocks and a brown bag, but even so, I look for ways to cut lunch prep time in the morning. (Remember that part about showering?) One of my main strategies for cutting preparation time is to partially assemble his lunch the night before.

Tuesday, I sent this lunch to preschool: chicken apple sausage, catsup, blueberry mini-muffin, white peaches and a half a banana.

Pre-assembly: Wyatt had a sausage for dinner the night before, so while I was putting his dinner together, I threw a second sausage in his lunch box. I also filled the catsup container, stuck the muffin in and got his juice container ready to go. I waited to add the fruit until morning because I needed to cut it up and I didn’t want it to brown.

Wednesday’s lunch was very simple: grapes, half a hot dog bun and some ham roll-ups.

Pre-assembly: I put the grapes in the silicon cup the night before. I also cut and rolled up the ham. All I added in the morning was the hot dog bun. Easy peasy!

There’s no picture for Thursday because we were in such a rush in the morning that I completely forgot to take one. I sent: turkey salami, another hot dog bun and some sliced plums from our neighbor’s tree.

Pre-assembly: I folded the salami up the night before (trust me — it was really quite lovely), then added the bun and the plum in the morning.

Here’s today’s (Friday’s) lunch:apple chunks, chicken apple sausage, corn muffin, catsup and a s’mores brownie.  I wrapped the brownie up in lots of saran wrap in hopes that he’ll need the teacher’s help to open it. If he does, I’m pretty sure she’ll make him eat some of the other stuff before she’ll give it to him.

Pre-assembly: None. Wyatt was a total hand-full last night and it took both of us to get him into bed.

This was a short week because of the 4th, so I only have three preschooler bento boxes to show this week.

One of my big new discoveries for lunch packing is that Wyatt loves this alphabet pasta. We’ve made it twice for dinner now and each time our meal has been a delight. He loves to show us each letter before he eats it and talk about what words start with the letter. This is a lovely change from the usual arguments and threats about him staying in his seat. So anyway, Tuesday I packed some leftover alphabet pasta, leftover carrots from dinner, a Laughing Cow cheese wedge and the last of the farmer’s market strawberries from last week.

Zach went to the farmer’s market Tuesday, so we had an embarrassment of riches as far as the berries go on Wednesday morning. I decided to load up the box with fresh strawberries, raspberries and a few frozen blueberries. There’s a PB&J sandwich man in there as well.

We didn’t do a proper run to the grocery store this week, and by Thursday we were running really low on lunch supplies. I ended up sending leftovers from our Wednesday night dinner: Mexican meatballs, leftover white rice shaped into heart and star shapes with onigiri molds and more farmer’s market stawberries. The lunch was a spectacular failure. Only a few of the strawberry chunks were missing when I opened his lunch box to clean it that night.

This was a pretty good week for Wyatt’s preschool bento boxes. For some reason he was in the mood to give new foods a chance and he ate a lot of the things I was sending for the first time.

Tuesday I sent peaches, dried blueberries, chicken taquitos and a little thing of salsa to dip the taquitos in. I didn’t have high hopes for this lunch because the taquitos are a new-ish food to Wyatt. He’s only eaten them once before and although he liked them he wasn’t particularly enthused about them. But amazingly, his lunch box came home completely empty. Score one for mom!

I sent taquitos again Wednesday because Wyatt asked for them! I also packed some fantastic bing cherries that Zach had brought home from the farmers market Tuesday night and some buttered alphabet shaped pasta. We’d eaten the pasta the night before with dinner and the novelty of eating pasta shaped like letters was very exciting for Wyatt.

Our neighbors have given Wyatt sandwiches of lunch meat and catsup on flat bread a couple of times and he’s always really enjoyed them. I decided to give it a try myself using turkey, and havarti cheese. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they were an abject failure, but he only ate one of the four wedges so they weren’t exactly a success either. I also sent fresh strawberries with a few frozen blueberries for color.

Friday’s lunch consists of a little container of blueberries and raspberries, turkey roll-ups and some home made zucchini bread. The berries are also from the farmers market and I started worrying that they would go bad before we could eat them all, so I threw them in the freezer the other night. I’m hoping they’ll thaw by lunchtime and also that they won’t be too juicy and messy.