Last lonche!

The school year is winding down, with just a few days remaining for Iris and another week beyond that for Ruby. Today was Ruby's last lonche, which in my opinion is real reason to celebrate. Mike was up at six making 48 dinosaur turkey cheese sandwiches and I had made my Costco trip earlier in the week to round out the meal with with baby carrots and because it was her last time this year, juice boxes and chocolate chip muffins for a treat, in direct violation of the "suggested guidelines." But I figure we had already violated school policy by having a father participate, as the school handbook specifically tasks "mamas" with this not so small job (update to the 21st century, please, bc I know someone out there from our lovely school will read this!). I've been on the fence about this piece of school life all year, especially once Iris started attending too. The idea is to have each mother (and yeah, I know the reality is that it is the mamas, but c'mon, let's at least set the expectation for fatherly participation--which has happened quite a bit in our household) provide lunch for the children in your kid's classroom once a month. That's 25+ kids in Ruby's class, and in Iris's case, because she is in a smaller classroom, it's twice a month for about 15 kids. We don't have a cook, as some of the families clearly do, and I only farmed it out once when I felt the pressure of actually providing the dish that we had been assigned and I of course had no idea how to make it. It was, in short, a lot of cooking. But making lunch every day would have been a ton of work too, so I'm not sure the grass is greener. We made lots of soup and veggie mac and I occasionally tried to approximate what I had been assigned but I always worried that Ruby might feel the sting of sending food that was just a bit weird. By the end of the year, the school had recognized the cultural challenge and often assigned me things like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which ironically, I resisted sending because out of my own gringa paranoia, I didn't want to be responsible for sending some child into anaphylactic shock. It all worked out though, and both girls are better and more adventurous eaters for the exposure to others' cooking and I hope the other children's parents would say the same. But I'm glad for the break now and we'll see how a little summer school daily lunch-packing feels in comparison.