Lunches for Littles

Before Ethan was born one of the areas of parenting I enjoyed with Ashley and Caitlin was making their lunch, whether for eating at home, at school or out and about. Just as with other useful and enduring habits (like dinner menu planning), it took a lot of time and thought to get into the habit of creating fun and nutrious lunches that the girls were excited to eat.

Using cookie cutters we made the moon (oranges) and stars (grilled cheese sandwiches)

Penguin turkey, ham, swiss sandwich and Mama (or Papa) Bear peanut butter and jam sandwich. We added nutella to the baby bear sandwich as a dessert. We have subsequently used candied eyes to really jazz up these kinds of sandwiches. I just don't have a photo yet.

Cookie cutter butterfly sandwiches (turkey, ham, swiss), oranges, strawberry milk and Newman Os

Sushi lunch

Fancy, fun and balanced Sushi lunch

Croissant turkey, ham and swiss sandwich

School lunch of panakes, boiled eggs, strawberries and plums (this photo was taken last autumn, we picked the plums from our neighbor's tree)

Another pancake school lunch. This time to take on the school trip to the zoo. Hence the little tray.

With the birth of Ethan I wanted to find a way to continue providing these fun lunches for the girls to enjoy. Time is the challenge. Prior to Ethan's arrival I would either make the lunches in the evening or get up early in the morning to prepare them. This last month making lunches in the evening just seemed like too much work, another task at the end of an already tiring and busy day of caretaking. But the morning was just not working either. There was just too much going on now that a baby's needs are a part of our morning. I found myself feeling frazzled in the morning if I left lunch prep until then.

I realize that I just have to discipline myself to prepare them in advance of the morning. So again, I got creative and enlisted the help of the girls. I made a menu that would be fun for them to choose from and from which we could plan the week's lunches in advance. Last Sunday I had the girls go through their menu and choose items from each food group tp make up a lunch for each school day. Once they got the idea they enjoyed planning their lunches. The next step was food shopping and making sure I had all the food choices on hand for the week. A further step will be enlistng the girls to help make their lunches. I'll build to this slowly. This week I had Ashley help with Sushi making, she loved helping add the salmon and using the sushi mat to make the roll. And we made enough for sushi for two separate days' lunches.

It's still hard to prepare lunches at the end of the day when I'm tired but the mornings go much smoother when I do and this is strong motivation. Also with the menu plan for each girl lunches can be made a few days in advance, like with the sushi this week. It will take time, patience, discipline and some help from other family members to make this a habit, but it will be very helpful and eventually a lot of fun restoring our creative lunches. James also had a great suggestion when he saw the menu below: laminate one each for Ashley and Caitlin and let them use dry erase pens to mark their choices. We can even use different colors for each of the different weekdays. I can feel the excitement returning already. Next stop Kinkos to use their laminator!

Our new Lunches for Littles Menu: