Gee, Thanks

Four-year-olds are funny. This morning I decided to get Liam dressed, and Josh went to get Zachary dressed. I didn’t see what Zachary was wearing before they headed downstairs (even though Zachary did come in to Liam’s room to tell me that he was going downstairs to make my birthday card somewhere I couldn’t see). I finally finished with Liam, and we headed downstairs. I take a look at Zachary and said, “Did you pick out your clothes & get dressed all by yourself?” He proudly said “Yes!” My reply was, “Aww…bless your heart…” He did not match. At all. Normally I would have told him that he needed to change either his shirt or his pants, but he was so proud of himself and I didn’t really want to start a battle this morning over clothes, so I let it go. Josh had fixed some biscuits for breakfast, so while I was waiting for them to finish, here’s the conversation Zachary & I had:

Zachary: Mommy, how old are you today?
Me: I’m 34 – can you believe it?
Zachary: [silence] Firty-four??
Me: Yeah, 34 – that’s a lot, isn’t it?
Zachary: [more silence – then running around the kitchen] Aaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!

OK then!

Last night was bittersweet too. The daycare we had Zachary in from 3 months until almost 2 provided a full, hot breakfast each day, as well as lunch (and 2 snacks) – it was included in the tuition. When we moved Zachary to the school he’s at now, it was a tough transition, because while they did offer a hot lunch, it was at a cost of $3 per day – on top of tuition. Since the tuition was already more than what we were paying before, we opted to forego the school lunch option, figuring we could pack a home lunch for less than $3 a day. So that is what we have been doing the majority of days for the past 2+ years. On occasion we have purchased a school lunch, but it’s been mostly home lunches. The home lunches have consisted largely of leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, and we’ve had many teachers compliment us on the yummy-looking lunches the boys bring each day. But the school’s owner has started on a mission to get all the kids at the school eating healthy. And while I feel like our lunches ARE healthy, she said in a meeting a few weeks ago that on any given day they are throwing a handful of home lunches out because they don’t feel they are appropriate. So starting today, a healthy school lunch is now included in tuition and home lunches are no longer allowed. It’s basically an all-organic lunch menu that instead of being catered by a 3rd party as before, will now be cooked in-house, now that they have built out a little kitchen. I know Zachary will love it. Liam is a wild card. He seems to have no problem eating veggies at school (or so we’ve been told), but since he never eats them at home, who knows how accurate that is. He may be throwing his veggies at a friend, but since his plate is clean, they assume he ate it. No clue. So it’s bittersweet because now we don’t have to worry about packing lunches anymore, which will be a huge time saver in the evenings & mornings, but it also means now we’re paying extra for this organic lunch that Liam may or may not eat. We’ll see – the owner is convinced she can get every child to eat veggies – we’ll see how successful she is!