I have to pack him a lunch.

I swear, that’s not why I chose this daycare!

He’s going to be going on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so I’ll be posting photos of his lunches on those days along with Wyatt’s. Packing a bento for a toddler is a little bit different from packing one for a preschooler or kindergartner. One big difference is that they’ll heat food up for Augie at his daycare, so I can pack stuff that doesn’t necessarily have to be eaten cold. I’m hoping to make some batches of meals ahead of time to freeze to make lunch-packing go a little more quickly. The other difference is that I need to do a bit more chopping up of fruits and veggies and whatnot so there’s less room for cute-ification (not to mention the fact that the cute stuff goes right over Augie’s head). Still, it’s kind of fun to be able to mix it up a little. Augie eats almost everything we give him so it will be nice to branch out a little.

Monday:

I tried to do too much before  Wyatt’s school drop-off on Monday and I found myself really pressed for time when putting his snack together. He begged me for chips and bean dip and I figured it wasn’t the worst snack in the world, so I gave in. Just so you know, I co not recommended packing bean dip this way! It got everywhere inside the bento box and Wyatt still had bean dip on his hands when he got home from school. I also sent an applesauce along.

Tuesday:

Wyatt’s lunch and snack were: more chips and bean dip (I put the lid on the red container which worked pretty well), a mini-tangerine, banana bread, fresh pineapple chunks, rice and deli ham roll-ups.

Augie’s lunch box had leftover carrots from dinner on Monday night, rice, peas, tofu chunks, more rice and pineapple.

When I picked Augie up from daycare and checked in on how his day went, the daycare provider told me, “Wow! You did an excellent job putting his lunch together!” I had to work really hard to keep from laughing out loud. Little does she know about my secret life as a lunch-obsessed crazy lady! Bwa ha ha HA!

Wednesday:

We broke out the jelly bean lunch box for Wyatt on Wednesday. The top layer had a couple of mini-tangerines in it which made Wyatt really happy. This batch of them has been perfect — sweeter than candy. I also put in a jelly sandwich cut into the shape of little men and some ham roll-ups on skewers.

Snack was a cup of pineapple chunks and some graham crackers. I also packed a yogurt tube, but forgot to put it in the photo.

Augie’s lunch was rainbow colored again. I packed peas, chopped grape tomatoes, tangerine wedges cut in half, rice and leftover curried chicken from dinner Tuesday night.

Thursday:

I loved how Thursday’s lunch looked — almost entirely straight lines with the chaos of the tangerine wedges breaking it up a bit. This Mondrian-esque lunch featured a half banana, a hot dog bun with strawberry jelly inside, tangerine wedges, Triscuits, banana bread, green beans, and salami.

As always, when I’m particularly proud of a lunch, Wyatt likes to keep me humble. Here’s what I found when I was unpacking his backpack last night:

It looks like he ate the salami, the banana bread and a few tangerine slices.

Friday:

This hastily assembled snack was a jelly sandwich and a tangerine.

We all woke up crabby today. The grown-ups woke up crabby. The kids woke up crabby. It’s raining. There is a kitchen that needs cleaning, laundry that needs folding, and the kids expect to be fed for some reason. I decided I needed a little influx of pure fantasy to cheer myself up, so in no particular order, here’s what I wish I was doing today:

• napping
• finishing my book (The Butcher and the Vegetarian)
• getting a massage
• eating a donut (this fake donut — the only one in the house — isn’t cutting it)
• napping with my kids
• reading this book so I can learn about all the cool features on my new camera
• picking a sun-warmed tomato off a plant in the backyard and eating for lunch
• watching whales leap out of the ocean in Hawaii

What do you wish you were doing today? Brighten up my dreary Friday!

February 26, 2010: Augie checks out his first pineapple. He was doubtful about it until I cut it up and let him eat it and then he decided pineapples are a good thing.

February 27, 2010: Wyatt has been giving Augie tooth brushing lessons in the evenings.

February 28, 2010: Zach finally gets to meet his new niece. He was traveling for work when she came home from the hospital and then he caught a cold, so he had to wait a few weeks to see her.

March 1, 2010: Batman’s vehicles are at the ready in case a diabolical crime occurs in Gotham City!

March 2, 2010: Ah yes! My morning cup of tea. I bought this mug a few months ago and it makes me happy every time I drink from it.

March 3, 2010: Our messy living room.

March 4, 2010: Augie emptied all the blocks out of their box and settled in to play with a toy.

One of my goals for this year was to learn to make marmalade or pickles. My Grandma Ruby was a canner and I have fond memories of going into the pantry in her basement and looking at the walls lined with jars of tomatoes, corn, dilly beans and lots and lots of pickles.

Her pickles were so good! I loved them piled on hamburgers and chopped up and mixed into tuna salad. And of course I liked to eat them straight too. One of the great regrets of my life is that I never got a canning lesson from my Grandma before she died.

But I digress. Today’s story is about marmalade.

My brother-in-law gave me a huge bag of oranges from his tree when we were over visiting about a week ago. I decided that I wanted to make marmalade from them but I wanted to jazz the recipe up a little, so I bought a bag of blood oranges too when I was at Trader Joes. My friend Shae had pointed me to the basic marmalade recipe in the Ball Blue Book of Preserving as a good beginner recipe. But when I went to the bookstore to get it, I accidentally bought Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving instead.You’d think that a book called the Complete Book of Home Preserving would have a basic marmalade recipe in it, wouldn’t you? Well, guess what? It doesn’t! So instead I chose the blood orange marmalade recipe because I had some blood oranges to use and it looked like a pretty basic recipe.

The recipe started off by having me score the oranges and take the peel off in big chunks.

Next, I was instructed to cover the peels with cold water and boil them. Twice.

Then, I was told to cool the orange peels until they were easy to handle, scrape all the white pith off and then slice the remaining orange part of the peel into paper thin strips.

This process took forever.

Most recipes just have you peel off the orange part of the peel with a vegetable peeler and slice those pieces up. I have no idea why this recipe had me do it this way but once I’d started this recipe I was too chicken to modify it because this was my first time canning anything. The process of scoring the oranges, peeling them, boiling them twice, scraping them and cutting them took three hours.

Three hours!

Around hour two, I started to suspect that the cookbook authors were screwing with me.

The recipe also told me to segment the oranges. I was part way through the second of the eight oranges when I knew for sure that the cookbook authors had it out for me. I gave up on the segmenting at that point and just chopped the crap out of the oranges. I pulled the biggest chunks of pith out and called it good.

Next I boiled the pulp and the peel for a half hour. Then the cookbook authors struck again: They told me to divide the mixture between two sauce pans, bring each to a boil and then slowly pour the sugar into each pan, stirring both pans constantly.

Picture that for a moment, if you will: a woman standing in front of the stove with a spoon in each hand stirring two pots of molten sugar for a half hour straight. Did I mention that I was also supposed to be preparing the jars and the lids while I did this?I opted to put all of the mixture in one pot.

And then I started stirring. And stirring. And stirring. I stirred that pot of marmalade for two hours! I knew it would take a little longer than the half hour the cookbook authors claimed because I was doing it all in one pot, but I didn’t know it would take four times as long to reach the gel stage. Sheesh! By the time I poured the marmalade into the jars and processed them, I was beat, but hearing the little ping! ping! ping! as my jars sealed was an awesome sound.

And my marmalade was darn good!

My six half-pint jars of marmalade that took seven hours to make.

After all that work, I decided I needed to dress them up a little, so I made a cute little label and put a ribbon around the rim.

Pretty cute, huh? I named the marmalade Little Bird Marmalade after my niece (whose dad gave me the oranges).

Monday’s snack box contained a buttermilk biscuit decorated with the Batman logo (I used food safe markers). The monkey box has a little bit of strawberry jam to spread on the biscuit. I rounded it all out with some dried cranberries.

Tuesday:

Tuesday’s lunch and snack were packed together in the big box. It had pineapple, cantaloupe, two mini blueberry muffins, chicken Italian sausage slices leftover from dinner on Monday night, and pepperoni pizza leftover from dinner on Sunday night.  I had to cut the pizza into strips to get it to fit in the box and Wyatt found that so bizarre that he wouldn’t eat them. Or maybe he doesn’t like cold pizza. I dunno.

Wednesday:

On Wednesday, I packed a banana chunk, some grape tomatoes, a mini muffin, baked tofu and more pineapple. Those pineapples go a long way.

For snack, I sent cantaloupe chunks, another muffin, pretzel thins and a yogurt tube.

Thursday:

Thursday’s lunch/snack combo was packed into the laptop lunchbox. It contained: a half banana, pretzel thins, garlic toast cut into star shapes, salami, pita bite crackers, and peaches with sprinkles.

I usually make Wyatt’s lunches while I’m giving the kids breakfast, fixing my own breakfast, nagging Wyatt to put on his shoes, and all that other morning stuff. For the first time ever, I made this lunch from start to finish all in one shot and on a whim, I got out a stop watch and timed how long it took me to make it. The result: 12 minutes and 4 seconds. I had no idea what I was going to put in the box when I started the timer, so part of that time was spent staring into the refrigerator tapping my foot and trying to get inspired. It probably would have been more like 10 minutes if I’d planned a little better because at the end I had all the boxes filled except for the yellow one and I had to take the time to make the toast. If I’d thought of it sooner, I would have just popped the bread in the toaster oven at the beginning and cooked it while I was doing the rest of the lunch.

I’m curious: How long does it take you to pack a lunch for your kid?

Friday:

On Monday, I discovered that biscuits are a perfect canvas for drawing with food markers so I couldn’t resist drawing a kitty face on another one for today’s snack. I also added a couple of orange wedges from Wyatt’s aunt and uncle’s tree. I love how this orange looks like a sparkly jewel.

When I went out on maternity leave after Augie’s birth, I started toying with the idea of quitting my job to stay home with the kids. And then when I was laid off from my job the decision was made for me. I’m not going to get into all the hows and whys of my lay-off, but I will say that there were several logical reasons why I was chosen to be the person in my department who was let go. But try as I might to not take it personally, it’s pretty hard to be laid off from a job and not take it personally. Unless entire divisions get the axe, there is always someone choosing who will or won’t get to keep their jobs and if you’re one of the ones who’s chosen to be let go you can’t help but think now and then, “I’m less valuable.” So, I’m just going to put it out there and say that this mindset is what set the tone for the start of my career as a stay at home mom.

I never thought that being a stay at home parent would be easy. I’ve had two maternity leaves and I watched the challenges that Zach faced every day in his three and a half years staying home with Wyatt, so I had a pretty good idea what to expect. But even so I had all these idyllic visions in my head about how it was going to be. I would take serene trips to the library with the kids and we’d all cuddle up on the couch afterward reading books together. Augie and I would enroll in Mommy and Me classes and when we picked Wyatt up from school we would all play together in the back yard until it was time to go inside and eat a nutritious dinner with Zach. And the house! The house would be so clean and neat!

You see — I was going to be different from all the stay at home parents who struggle with the job. I am very organized and efficient and I’ve kicked ass at every single job I’ve ever had. I can get all the hard stuff done while the baby naps.

Oh.

Wait a minute.

Maybe I’m not so different from all those other parents.

Let’s start with the house-cleaning. The fact is, I’m not a very good housekeeper and I really don’t enjoy it at all. I enjoy having a clean house, of course, but somehow my house is messier now than it was when I was working full time. Our house is always a total disaster. There are toys everywhere. There are piles of books and magazines and mail on every flat surface. There is never a time — ever — when some room in our house does not desperately need to be picked up. I’m going to be very brave here and show you a picture of what our living room looked like today, March 3, at 2:07 p.m.:

I will never summon the courage to take a similar picture of our office. It is way, way more embarrassing than this photo.

And the laundry. Oh, dear God — the laundry! It is just out of control. I fantasize about donating all our clothes to the Goodwill so I don’t have to do another stinking load of wash.

I do OK on dinner, I guess. Mostly. And I’m super good at lunches (if I may toot my own horn).

But most days when I walk into the house, I want to immediately walk out again to find someplace — any place — else to be so that I don’t have to engage in the endless cycle of loading the dishwasher, picking up toys, starting the laundry, and on and on ad nauseum.

I also didn’t anticipate how different the boys’ schedules would be. Between Wyatt’s school drop-off and pick-up, Augie’s naps and the necessity of feeding everyone, there really isn’t much time for fun family activities in a day.

And then there’s the boredom. I love spending time with Augie, but at 18 months, he’s not much of a conversationalist. And the five year old is an excellent communicator, but all he wants to talk about is Batman. It would be nice if he could read the latest book of Sedaris essays so we could discuss it over chai, but it’s just not happening. It’s been really hard to move from a challenging job that required my full brain capacity, sophisticated problem-solving skills, and constant interaction with lots of different people to a job that requires that I wash dishes, change diapers and point to objects and say what color they are in a clear and deliberate voice. Let’s face it – the work of a stay at home mom, isn’t exactly scintillating. It’s very important and it’s challenging in its own way, but a whole heck of a lot of it is boring, repetitive drudgery.

There are incredible sweet spots of course. I missed much of Wyatt’s first year because I was working full time, so I have treasured being there for all of August’s milestones. When I’m feeling down, I can almost always coax a giggle or two out of my kids to cheer me up. And I love being there to pick Wyatt up from school every day. I love how his face lights up when he spots me among the parents milling around outside the Kindergarten door.

Then there are other benefits that I never would have anticipated.  I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl and now, for the first time since I graduated from college I have a little bit of time to actually do it. And there’s this crazy bento thing in my life that I never would have seen coming in a million years. And I actually manage to do some crafting now and then which is also pretty satisfying.

So yeah – it’s a mixed bag. Some days I love it. Some days I don’t. But right now, it’s who I am and what I do.

Completed:

• #19 Make a softie for my niece-to-be. I used this pattern from Betz White to make this cutie little hedgehog out of some of the many sweaters I’ve felted in the past couple of months. While I was putting him together, I started calling him by the name Hedgie von Hedgenstein. My favorite part is this little heart on his tummy:



• #21 Make at least 30 scrapbook layouts. — I participated in the Layout a Day Challenge that Lain Ehmann put on and I made 28 scrapbook layouts in 28 days! Phwew! That was hard. I already posted about my first 12 a few weeks ago. Here are the final 16 I made. (You can view a larger version of any of these by clicking the appropriate link below the mosaic.)


1. August, 2. I Bento, 3. Valentines Day 2009, 4. That Kind of Mom, 5. good bye, old friend, 6. The Bay Area Discovery Museum, 7. Jumpers!, 8. Life Lessons, 9. Sweet Little Evelyn, 10. puzzles and hot chocolate, 11. Good Eater, 12. Laundry Love, 13. the best toy ever?, 14. Augie at 18 months, 15. Breakfast Out, 16. Bean Dirt

• #34 Sign up for a Mommy and Me type class with Augie. — I tried out a free Gymboree class with August this month to see if it was something he would like to do. He was completely terrified by it and it was crazy expensive so we decided not to go that route. I looked around a little more and found a baby gym class at the local Y. It was crowded and chaotic, but Augie seemed to really enjoy himself, so we are going to start attending semi-regularly. And at $5 per session vs. $17 per session at Gymboree, it fits a lot better in our budget.
• #36 Take August to ride the steam trains. — I took both boys up to Tilden and we rode the steam trains. Yay!
• #42 Buy a laundry hamper. — We haven’t had a laundry hamper since we moved into this house. I bought two so we can sort the laundry on the fly. If I had my preference, they would have had lids, but I couldn’t find anything I liked with lids, so I’m making do with these. In any case, it looks way nicer than a big mountain of clothes on the floor of our bedroom.

Before:



After:



• #52 Buy an every day skirt. — I bought this skirt at Old Navy. It’s totally boring, but that’s sort of the point.

In Progress:

• #3 Find five reliable, healthy, delicious soup recipes. — I’ve got one more soup recipe under my belt: Easy Sausage Tortellini Soup. I followed the recipe pretty closely, but instead of cabbage, I added in baby spinach at the end. This soup took about a half an hour to throw together and it was beyond delicious. For a recipe with so few ingredients, it had an  incredible depth of flavor.
• #54 Find a babysitter. — I’m visiting some day cares this week to see if they’ll be a good match for Augie. Wish me luck!

Upcoming:

• #4 Learn to make pickles and/or marmalade. — My brother-in-law gifted me with a huge bag of oranges so I can try making marmalade. I consulted with my friend Shae who is a marmalade queen and she suggested that I pick up a copy of the Ball Book of Home Preserving which I have now acquired. I’m going to need to look the book over and get some equipment still, but I’m hoping to knock out some marmalade in the next couple of weeks.
• #7 Make macarons. — I also got my copy of I Love Macarons in the mail this week, so I’m hoping to try a batch of those in March too.

February 19, 2010: Augie loves, loves, loves jumping right now and he especially loves holding onto the edge of his crib and going up and down. Sometimes Wyatt likes to join in by jumping with him.

February 20, 2010: This is my new niece, Evelyn. Isn’t she a little snuggle bunny? She was born on the 15th, but we had to wait 5 whole days to meet her because we all had terrible colds and I really didn’t want to pass on our germs to such a tiny little baby. When we were finally well enough, we went to Erin and Bryan’s to see her. We are so happy she has joined our family.

February 21, 2010: Though it looks like Augie is reading to Wyatt here, Wyatt is actually telling Augie the story of Officer Buckle & Gloria. Like all of Peggy Rathman’s books this is one of our favorites. We often quote the safety rules in it to the boys, our favorite being “Safety Rule #1: Never stand on a chair with wheels!”

February 22, 2010: Wyatt and I played a quick game of Trouble while Augie finished his breakfast. He beat me.

February 23, 2010: The boys goof around in their room before bed time

February 24, 2010: Augie likes to lay on our bed while I fold laundry.

February 25, 2010: Playing on the school playground after Kindergarten pick-up with some of the kids from Wyatt’s class. There is some kind of fad with using these swinging rings all of a sudden. I’ve been taking the boys to play on the playground after school for months now and I think I’ve only seen kids use these rings once or twice. Then, this week there are suddenly kids swinging back and forth constantly. Huh.

Phwew! After a week off school, I was completely out of the habit of making lunches and snacks for school! I totally forgot to put something together until 5 minutes before we had to head out the door so I threw together this quick snack of ham cubes and one of Wyatt’s beloved buns. I added a lion pick to snazz it up a bit and to give him something to use to eat the ham besides his fingers. The lion pick was chosen to match the lion on the lid of the bento box:

I’m all about the coordination, folks!

Tuesday:

Tuesday was Laptop Lunchbox day. I put in a couple of Chessman cookies, pretzel sticks, dried cranberries, peaches and pears with sprinkles, a whole wheat bun, ham cubes and apple slices. As usual, he didn’t eat the apple slices but I like to put them in now and then just in case he decides to try them.

Wednesday:

Lunch on Wednesday was sweet Italian chicken sausage rounds, a lone cherry tomato, banana bread and pineapple and blueberries arranged to look like a bumble bee (though I didn’t really realize that until I was reviewing the pictures).

The Italian sausage is a new food we’re trying. As you’ve probably gathered by now, Wyatt is a sausage lover, but he’s always declared Italian sausage to be “too spicy”. I bought these sausages for a lasagna I made on Tuesday night and he was eating the chunks almost as fast as I could put them into the pan so I decided to try them out for his lunch on Wednesday.

I packed an applesauce crusher, pretzel thins and dried cranberries for his snacks.

Thursday:

Thursday’s lunch had wedges of whole wheat flat bread that I toasted and spread with a smidge of butter and garlic salt, blueberries, pretzel thins, banana bread, pineapple chunks, grape tomatoes and a block of baked tofu with his name in it.

Friday:

Today’s snack was some blueberries and a hand full of pretzel thins.

February 12, 2010: I made a batch of hard-boiled eggs for breakfasts and lunches and put them in a carton in the fridge. Zach and I got our wires crossed when I told him where they were and this is what ended up happening when he gave one a good whack on the counter to peel it.

February 13, 2010: Oh. My. God. This is one of those humiliating motherhood moments like no other. I was checking Wyatt’s homework over before I sent it off to school and I noticed this drawing at the bottom of the page where he was practicing writing his P’s. It’s a picture of a guy shooting a gun  at someone and saying, “HA HA HA HA”. I didn’t even know Wyatt knew how to spell “ha ha”. He says it was a good guy shooting a “bad guy”, but I was still appalled.

February 14, 2010: Tubby time!

February 15, 2010: Wyatt was off school for winter break this week so I tried to get us out of the house every day to do something fun. This day we went up to Tilden park to ride the steam trains. It was the first time we’d gone with Augie since he’s been aware of his surroundings and I was curious to see how he liked it. When we took Wyatt at about the same age, he was so scared that we dubbed them the “terror trains”, but it ended up that Augie thought the ride was pretty fun. (Wyatt loved the trains the next time we rode them, by the way…)

February 16, 2010: Zach let Wyatt play with his phone as a reward for being well-behaved at dinner. He likes to play Doodle Jump and he’s pretty good at it. Note the little red socks on the floor under Augie’s high chair. He takes his socks off practically every time he eats a meal.

February 17, 2010: Yay! Yay! YAY!!! My new camera came! This is one of the photos I took the first day. I used the highly sophisticated stick-out-your-arm-and-click method of photography.

February 18, 2010: For another fun vacation activity I took the kids to the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Here August works on building the Golden Gate Bridge.