Wyatt’s snack on Monday was two clementines and some cheese crackers.
Tuesday:
For Tuesday’s lunch, I packed garlic bread cut into a heart shape, turkey meatballs, ketchup and a couple of cuties.
Snack was a half a banana and some pretzels.
Wednesday:
I like this lunch! I think it came out so pretty. It held clementine wedges, salami and a half a baby baguette.
The snack box had dried cranberries an cinnamon pita chips.
Thursday:
I combined lunch and snack into the laptop lunch box on Thursday. It had a half a banana, cheese crackers, berry applesauce cup, grapes, baked tofu, and a strawberry cereal bar.
Friday:
I made a half-hearted attempt to make a Halloween bento today, mostly because I felt I had to do something. So I drew a jack-o-lantern face on a Cheez-it and a ghost face on a mini-baguette. Then I threw in some grapes and called it good.
October 8, 2009: Zach, Augie and I snuck away for lunch at Fatapples while Wyatt was at school. Aren’t we mean? I felt pretty bad about it, but Augie didn’t. He ate his multigrain roll with gusto.
October 9, 2009: I ran a few errands and forgot to feed the meter after wrestling Augie into the stroller. I remembered 10 minutes after I walked away from the car, but there was already a ticket on it by the time I got back. Drat!
October 10, 2009: You can see Augie’s second tooth here. Otherwise, I don’t have much to say about this picture. I’ve been taking too many Augie-in-high-chair photos for my daily photos, I think.
October 11, 2009: We spent the afternoon at Ardenwood farm’s harvest festival and then played at the pumpkin patch right outside the gate. Wyatt refused to sit still for a pumpkin photo, but I boxed Augie in and got some good pictures of him. Bwa ha ha ha!
October 12, 2009: I let Wyatt watch a movie before school as a treat/bribe for keeping quiet while I put Augie down for his nap.
October 13, 2009: Look at this little climber! He got up onto the purple chair and then crawled over to the end table.
October 14, 2009: Wyatt made his own sandwich for the first time EVER! I’m not sure what inspired him, but he was determined to do it all by himself. I’m all over it.
I had chance to do some scrapbooking yesterday and I made this page about my geographic heritage. This page was a bit of a departure from what I normally do. For starters, it was about me, not the kids. Then, I started with the story I wanted to tell and found photos to support it, rather than the other way around. I actually couldn’t find any photos of Iowa in my photo file so I chose a recent-ish photo of myself and scrounged up some Creative Commons photos from Flickr to add to the page. I love Flickr.
The page topic was inspired by the ebook 20 Simple Secrets of Happy Scrapbookers from Ella Publishing. One of the “secrets” is something along the lines of “remember where you came from” and when I read that, it got my mental wheels spinning.
The journaling is hidden behind the state cut-out. It reads:
I am from Iowa.
I spent my first 18 years in Cedar Rapids and I loved it. I loved my elementary school. I loved the park near my house. I loved swimming all day in the summer and catching lightning bugs on the front lawn as the sun set. I loved sitting on the porch reading a book until it was too dark to see the words on the page. I loved the snowy winters and the ridiculous amount of clothing I had to wear to even venture outside. I loved shoveling the sidewalk (up to a point). I loved pork tenderloin sandwiches, corn on the cob and home grown tomatoes. I loved having a Dairy Queen within walking distance of my house. I loved the farmers in their John Deere caps and the commercials for Lorsban that played during the evening news. I loved how every person who’d ever even considered running for president descended on the state every fourth year. I loved going to fast food restaurants, driving up and down First Avenue and sneaking into the parks after they were closed to run whooping through the woods with my friends because there was nothing else for teenagers to do.
As of this year, I have now spent more of my life in California than I did in Iowa. Every election I’ve ever voted in was in California. Every home I’ve paid to live in was in California. Every real job I’ve had has been here. I pay taxes here. I got married here. My children were born here. By pretty much any standard, I’m a Californian.
So why do I still feel like an Iowan? Why is it that when I see someone in a Hawkeye sweat shirt I stop them to talk to them? Why do I first look to see what Iowa did on USA Today infographics? Why am I so proud to see Tom Harkin and so ashamed to see Chuck Grassley in the news? Why is it that I like sweet corn so much? I think Iowa is ingrained on me because my experiences as a kid in Iowa shaped so much of who I am as an adult. I guess what they say is true: you can take the girl out of Iowa, but you can’t take the Iowa out of the girl.
Gah! I didn’t record the URL for the photo of the cornfield and now I can’t find it again. If anyone recognizes it please let me know so I can give proper attribution.
Frances…I mean, Wyatt…wanted another jam sandwich for his snack on Monday, so I sent that along with a couple of cuties.
Tuesday:
The main part of Tuesday’s lunch was some leftover turkey corn chili that I sent in the thermos. I’ll confess that I was shocked that Wyatt ate this at dinner on Monday and even more shocked — SHOCKED! — that he requested it for lunch on Tuesday. (The recipe is from The Scramble.) He also got some tortilla chips to go with it.
I also packed a bigger box for snack and to supplement the chili. This box had cornbread (also leftover from dinner), cuties decorated like jack-o-lanterns with food markers, some raspberries and some dried cranberries.
Wednesday:
Wednesday’s lunch went in the laptop lunchbox. I sent a juice box, berry applesauce, clementine wedges, cornbread, deli ham and a few cheese crackers.
If you look very carefully in the silverware compartment, you can see that I put a straw in. You also may notice that the applesauce has a hole poked in it. The idea here is that Wyatt can stick the straw in and “drink” the applesauce. I got this fun idea from Parent Hacks and Wyatt is totally ga ga for the concept.
I also sent along a snack of pretzels and dried cranberries.
Thursday:
Lunch on Thursday was a half banana, garlic toasts cut into cat shapes, salami and a cutie.
Snack was the same as Wednesday: pretzels and dried cranberries. No picture. Too boring.
Friday:
Friday’s snack was a couple of clementines, some pretzel sticks and a pumpkin muffin. Yummmmmm…pumpkin muffins…
October 1, 2009: Brotherly love? This is so typical of the boys’ relationship right now. Wyatt giving Augie a big hug and Augie trying to get the heck away. Wyatt really does mean well, it’s just that his hugs are a little…er…exuberant. I frequently find myself saying, “Tone it down a little, buddy. Nobody should cry when you hug them.”
October 2, 2009: This was the day my boy turned five. FIVE! I remember the day he was born like it was yesterday. Next thing I know, he’ll be thirty or something. One of his gifts from his dad and I was this kid-sized guitar. His daddy is hoping to get him started with some lessons in the next few months.
October 3, 2009: Parachute play at Wyatt’s birthday party. If you’re ever looking for someone to rock a parachute, Dale at the Albany Y is your gal. Even I had fun doing the parachute.
October 4, 2009: These bath towels belong to Zach and me. Can you guess who’s is which?
October 5, 2009: Wyatt had a play date at the park with his best buddy from preschool. He misses him.
October 6, 2009: Since Augie learned to climb up on the couch that’s the only place he wants to hang out.
October 7, 2009: Augie has insisted on feeding himself for several months now and because of that, his meals take between an hour and an hour and a half. When you multiply that by 3 meals a day, sometimes it seems like he spends half his waking hours in his high chair.
I didn’t take a photo of the snack on Monday because I was running late and it was just pretzels and clementines. I’m sure you can imagine what that looks like after two straight weeks of pretzel and clementine photos…
Tuesday:
Tuesday I sent a combined lunch and snack in the laptop lunchbox. It had cheese crackers, garlic naan stars, homemade applesauce, clementines, rice balls in a bear and star shape and turkey meatballs that I quartered and threaded onto skewers. The little blue box had ketchup in it.
Wyatt ate all of this except the applesauce which bummed me out because it was so frickin’ good. He just wouldn’t touch it though. Oh well — more for me.
Wednesday:
I loved the lunch I sent on Wednesday, if I do say so myself. All the colors in it were so pretty. It had a toasted baby baguette, leftover pork tenderloin, blood orange wedges, a chunk of banana and some raspberries.
The blood oranges are something new we were trying. I thought Wyatt might think they were fun because they’re kind of Halloween-y, what with the “blood” and all. They were a bit too tart for him though.
Snack was a half jelly sandwich and some cheese crackers. Wyatt has been obsessed with jelly sandwiches for the past few days to the point where I’ve started jokingly calling him Frances.
Thursday:
Thursday I sent a thermos full of pasta with butter, garlic and parmesan for the main part of Wyatt’s lunch. I made an regular sized bento for his snack and told him he should supplement his lunch from it if he wanted to. He asked for “monster” jelly sandwiches in it, so I cut the bread into the shape of little men and decorated as well as I could with the food markers. The food markers don’t work so well for the detail work on regular sandwich bread, but five-year-olds totally don’t care. While I was thinking to myself that they looked kind of pathetic, Wyatt was pronouncing them to be “awesome.” I also put in some salami on jack-o-lantern picks that I found in the Halloween baking supplies at Target or the party supply store (I can’t remember which) and I drew some jack-o-lantern faces on some clementines with food markers.
Friday:
No school Friday, so no bento boxes. I’ll probably just throw him a bag of M&M’s and call it good.
Comments
bentos · food · kid · kindergarten · photo
.
