Tired Mommy

Back-to-school Lunches

Aug 202012

I’ve been trying to minimize the stuff we buy for going back-to-school. We are about to get hit up for money at every turn. I can’t put off buying school supplies any longer. I’ve found that a few things we have are re-useable. School boxes, scissors, pencil cases. Our backpacks are in good shape but both kids need new lunch boxes. I’ve ordered a couple from llbean.com.

Last year I was packing a lunch similar to the one above: a sandwich, clementines or strawberries, prepackaged apple sauce, prepackaged yogurt tubes, chocolate milk. The convenience foods were killing us with their added sugar. I’m not anti-sugar but I worry my kids were getting too much during their school day. It seems like it’s in everything my kids like to eat!

Most Children Are Not Meeting the Recommendations
Onlely 17% consume 3 or more servings of vegetables.
Only 14% consume 2 or more servings of fruit.
- according to the USDA

Our elementary school also asks kids to bring a snack – such a good idea. Snack time is during recess so it needs to be something they can consume quickly and throw away any packaging. A family favorite has been granola bars or goldfish. I am so happy to learn Quaker Chocolate Chip granola bars do not contain high fructose corn syrup. Hooray! Anyway I’ll be working on improving our snacks too. I’m hoping that we’ve sorta detoxed over the summer. Monkeyboy will eat a banana, provided it doesn’t get bruised between home and the playground.

This Hershey Bar has 210 calories and 24 grams of sugar.

I’ve had a hard time trying to find out how much added sugar is OK because there is not recommended daily allowance for sugar.

The American Heart Association “recommends limiting the amount of added sugars you consume to no more than half of your daily discretionary calories allowance. For most American women, that’s no more than 100 calories per day, or about 6 teaspoons of sugar (25g). For men, it’s 150 calories per day, or about 9 teaspoons (37g).”

Here is a little math for you.

It seems my kids daily caloric intake should be about 1600 calories a day with about 120 of those calories being ‘empty calories’. I think I got that empty calories bit from the USDA website but it’s not at all clear. There are 4 calories in a gram of sugar.

120 cal. ÷ 4 cal/gram = 30 grams of sugar per day
is the maximum amount of sugar a child age 7-9 should consume in a day.

So I’m getting on the Bento Box bandwagon. Our new lunchboxes seem large enough to hold a number of different Bento Box systems (9.5″ x 7″ x 3.75″). I’m hoping to increase our fresh food consumption, cut down on our grocery bill and the amount of trash we generate as well.

I know this blog is all over the place but it’s how I live my life. Maybe you’re like me. Slow to get started and easily distracted. If so, follow along and we’ll do it together. To catch up resolve to lower your sugar intake, reduce your packaging, and buy a new lunchbox.

I also needed a place to save recipes and cute ideas for the lunch box. I actually have two Pinterest boards Cute Food and Bento Lunches I’ll Actually Make. Some folks are harder to link to, so I’ll just talk about them for inspiration and so I don’t forget.
Here are some yummy lunch ideas from Leopard Girl on Flickr. She is a big fan of wraps and simple fruits and vegetables as sides.

Whole grain wrap with hummus, Trader Joe’s eggplant/garlic/pepper spread, grilled chicken, & grilled zuccini
a cut up plum
cucumber slices
sugar snap peas

Turkey meatballs (again from Trader Joe’s)
a cut up plum
cucumber slices (with salt and pepper this time)
super cute stuffed tiny tomatoes

All righty then! I’m going to use the small containers I already have on hand for starters. I’m looking at buying some Bento Buddies to make things easier on me. If I have at least two sets of everything then I can run one set through the dishwasher while I pack lunch in the other. It is also my goal to pack lunches the night before. Something I haven’t done before because a soggy or stale sandwich is just too sad. If I make something especially cool, I’ll post a photo. Check the Pinterest Boards for the newest links.

“Make the most of yourself….for that is all there is of you.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chores and Salary Negotiation

Katy No Responses »

Aug 092012

I am probably the last mom on the planet who’s decided to pay her kids to do chores. My friends seem to have been doing this for years. At first I didn’t want to link money with helping out around the house (because Hell, housework isn’t my ‘job’!). And it was difficult to persuade my kids, with in-state family we see all the time, to work for money. My darling middle-class kids lack for nothing. But I’ve come to believe the time is right for money management lessons mostly because I think, “now they’ll get it”. They’ve learned they have to do chores anyway and additionally are tired of being dependent on others to get what they want.

My extended family went to Walt Disney World about a week ago, more on that soon. My son and daughter each had a fixed amount of money to spend this time instead of hitting up various relations to buy them stuff. It went wonderfully well. Each child bought things that they really wanted, spent time thinking about their purchases, and even came home with some cash.

So here we are. I’ve been surveying friends and researching online to find out what it is that people have their kids do and how much they pay them. My friends pay their kids a lot! $1 per year of their lives per week. That’s $10/week or $40/month or $480/year! I think I have some kind of mental block about money. I can’t believe that things cost what they do. I’m so tight with my money (in my mind) that you’d think I’d be rich! Anyway, I can’t start there. I need to ease myself into it, especially when these people should be doing these things anyway.

My children are 7.5 and 9.5 years old. I’ve told them I’ll start paying each of them $3/week every Friday. See how cheap I am? The other online recommendation was to pay children $0.50/year of their age if you couldn’t stomach a buck/year of their age, which I cannot. I did tell them this is where we are starting and we’ll see how it goes and in a little while we could talk about raises.

We’ve spoken a little about the kinds of chores they’ll be doing and how important attitude is when one is paid to do something. We talked about how it is your responsibility to make sure that you were not taken advantage of, how it wouldn’t be fair for me to ask them to do ALL the chores the household requires for only $3/week. But how, at the same time, one can’t just cherry-pick the chores one would like to do. For instance my daughter volunteered to do the laundry except for the folding. Well...everyone knows that is the absolute worst part, so no deal there. She and I agreed we’d do the folding together until she felt comfortable doing it - a little on-the-job training.

Update:
I stink at this overseeing chores job. After the kids and I made our agreement and did one day of chores we promptly went out of town. It was an unavoidable family thing. So I haven’t paid my kids and here we are at Thursday again. Tomorrow I’ll owe them each double. I need a large newsprint drawing tablet to write the daily goals on because I can’t decide on a regular set of daily chores. I’ll let you know how that goes.

And just to add to the number of chores needing to be done – we got a puppy! We haven’t listed those out but the kids are great with the puppy. They are walking her and training her and alert to when she might need to be let out for a potty break.

Flexible is as Flexible Does

Becky No Responses »

Jul 032012

I work with a woman that I’m pretty sure has no life outside of her employment. She is about 50 years old, unmarried with no children and no significant other. She comes from a small town in Louisiana and is one of the younger offspring in a line of 13 siblings. This is a woman that can go from a good day to a bad day in 8 work hours.

She’s been working in this position as executive secretary/bookkeeper for over 10 years. Her whole world revolves around what she does here. She lives and breathes this job. I figure she has nothing else in her life. How do I know? Oftentimes she comes to me in the mornings with a “solution” to an issue we had dealt with the previous workday. During our work day, she sits at her computer and thinks about my job and how I can do things differently/better and will share her pearls of wisdom with me. Her favorite phrase is “I was just curious …” when she wants to know about my work process. She supervises and monitors the administrative staff, even though she is not required to as per her job description. She arrives at the office early and stays late.

Our offices are situated right next to each other. We share a thermostat, which is located in her office, much to my chagrin. She wants it cold because she is menopausal; I want it warm because I am not. I’ve even gone so far as to move my desk away from the air vent, so that the cold air doesn’t blast on me. In her own defense, she has come to me and let me know that she doesn’t mean to upset me with the temperature setting, but obviously she can’t take off more clothes to accommodate her hot flashes, so please could I just put a sweater on. I comply because I don’t want to see her naked body sashaying up and down the halls.

She loves going to her doctors’ appointments. I bet she has at least 3-5 appointments every month but usually it’s more. I’m not kidding! She has year-round allergies, which cause sneezing and coughing. Her stress levels cause her to sigh loudly and cuss to herself all day long (I don’t think she realizes I can hear her). She recently tore the muscle in her bicep, which gave her the perfect reason to have to go to physical therapy weekly. She goes to the bathroom a lot (sorry, I didn’t mean to notice), perhaps due to some sort of bladder issue? I attribute her focus on her own health as a result of not having anyone else to look out for her.

She has tried the dating scene. She joined a singles club and the gym once in hopes of meeting someone but to no avail. She attends church. Nothing. Her alternative is to stick to the things she knows: she goes on trips with her siblings or drives 6 hours to visit her momma in Louisiana when she’s on “vacation.”

She is what I call a “finicky eater.” She won’t eat anything directly off the menu. She always makes a special request. She wants her food prepared the way she wants it or she’s not going to eat it. I guess I’m not that hard to please. I will almost always enjoy the dish that is served to me, as is. And if my dish happens to come with something I don’t want on it, I just pick it off.

My point is that this woman’s life could be so much easier and enjoyable if she were more flexible. She may even have a better chance at meeting someone to share her time with. It boggles my mind when I think a person can get so stuck in their ways that it’s impossible to deviate from how they do things, often to the disadvantage of themselves and/or to others. I suppose this is something that takes years to develop and I’m sure it takes a committed effort to be more open and to embrace the ways of others. Mind you, all the things I’ve described above are not bad in and of themselves. It’s the whole package that frustrates me and my vision for how things could be for her if she could adapt more easily. Alas, it is not my business, but I thought it might be interesting to write about it here.

After work today, I am attending a fun party with my mama friends and their kids. There will be lots of yummy things to eat and drink and good company. The kids will have a blast, I’m sure. This is what life can be and I hope that my colleague will find some happiness in her future life as well.

Beautiful Chain Reaction

Becky No Responses »

Jun 042012

This commercial is so lovely. It makes me feel good inside every time I see it. We should all strive to help each other more often.

End-of-School Month from Hell

Becky 1 Response »

Jun 042012

For those moms whose children have successfully finished their 2011-12 school year, I congratulate you. You made it! This month has truly been a test of strength for all of the moms that I know. Why is it that so many activities must be crammed into the last 4 weeks of the school year?

My goodness, I have never been on so many field trips in my life! I have never volunteered so much or donated so much money for food and gifts as I have this month. Is it that more is being asked of us or am I just getting old? I tell ya, I am exhausted from all the running around!

But I know I’m not alone. I have heard the gripes and the groans from my maternal colleagues. On top of our everyday responsibilities to our families and households, we are called upon to go that extra mile. And we do.

As my first line of defense, I went out and bought one of those huge planning calendars and used my brightest markers and best handwriting to fill out the activities for May. Then I hot-glued it to the pantry door in the kitchen – at eye level – so I could not claim that I didn’t see or know about the upcoming events. That thing was so overloaded with words, that I couldn’t decipher it from afar. But upon closer inspection, all the work involved became clear, sometimes to my dismay.

I pride myself for not overloading my family with extra-curricular activities. I think downtime is a good thing. But this spring, my daughter signed up for swim team and my son is participating on a select basketball team. You wanna talk about full schedule (how do the others do it)? My husband and I are taking the kids to practices 5 times a week and spending our weekends at competitions. I suspect that the combination of the extra-curricular and school activities is what sent me over the edge.

I have sewed costumes and made alterations. I have shopped for drinks, snacks and gifts and carried them inside. I have packed special sack lunches and swimsuits with towels and sunscreen. I have set up chairs, cleaned tables and swept up. I have served food to teachers. I sorted through old digital photos for a class project. I worked the book fair. This in addition to h-o-m-e-w-o-r-k and a book report! On and on … Sound familiar?

But! here’s the upside: I got to be together with my kids during school hours and see them interact with their peers. I saw them on stage playing their roles, all nervous and cute. I learned interesting facts about a local sculptor at a museum visit. I got to witness a large group of sixth graders “in action” while hiking the greenbelt. I chatted with other moms at a class picnic and got to know them better. I brushed up on my baking and appetizer-making skills. And as an added bonus: I caught up on all my volunteering for the year!

As they say, all’s well that ends well. And we have ended this school year on a good note. Here’s to summer! Enjoy – you deserve it!

Strangers I Know (But Don’t Know Me)

Becky No Responses »

May 172012

Funny how you get to “know” the people you see on the weekdays, when everyone goes to the same place at the same time. When I take the kids to school in the mornings, I recognize more than a handful of people along the way. I think about them in my freetime sometimes and I have given them all special names:

“Our Friend, Robin” – I know her name because I encountered her in a store once, talking to her boyfriend and he said her name. Robin walks everywhere she goes. I usually see her trudging along the main strip near the intersection closest to my house. She almost always wears a orange t-shirt and a fanny pack and in the mornings, she carries a to-go coffee in her right hand. She has beautiful, long blonde hair, which she pulls back in a ponytail when it’s hot. Sometimes she ventures out onto other streets and I usually manage to see her at least once a day.

“Bus Stop Man” – he sits at a bus stop, waiting for his transportation to arrive around 7:20 a.m. He must work at some sort of retail establishment that requires him to wear a red shirt with his name over the left pocket. He sports very thick eyeglasses and sometimes when we approach him, he will look up from his phone with his big, open eyes and it makes me and the kids chuckle.

“Homeless Guy” – he stands on the same corner in the mornings and holds his sign. It says “Homeless – Anything Will Help – God Bless.” He knows to stand in this spot because this is the direction most people are driving to get to work or school. The thing that strikes me the most about him is his sad smile. When it’s cold outside, he wears a long, dark blue wool coat, which goes past his knees and a hat. He also grows a beard, which helps keep his chilly cheeks toasty. Come summer, he wears a few different t-shirts with holes, which always look like they need to be washed. He also shaves his face. In the afternoons, he stands in another spot, just up the road, to catch the workers going back home. His smile is still sad.

“Crazy Guy” – I see him only sporadically but always in the same area too. He sits on top of a city trash can near our intersection and moves his arms and legs to the music coming through the earphones of his MP3 player. He waves at everyone that drives by and always has a huge smile on his face. I wonder if he’s happy or just crazy? Or both?

“Crossing Guard” – Same woman, every day. She is a petite woman with transition glasses and she always wears a visor. When it’s cold, she wears one of those standard-issue orange & yellow reflective coats, which on her, almost touches the ground. The mothers, fathers and students that are helped across the street by her seem to know her. This morning, I watched someone showing her something on her smartphone. She smiles when she talks to waiting customers. At the end of her work day, I have actually seen her holding up the sign for herself to cross the road to get where she’s going.

I love my neighborhood – and all the strangers in it!

Slowpokes – Stay Right!

Becky No Responses »

May 082012

Every time I get on the road with my car, it seems I get upset. Today is worse because it’s raining and people are just dumber than usual when it comes to driving. I am a mom and I have places to go and I don’t need some slowpoke driver sitting in the left lane, blocking me from getting to my destination. So here’s a personal note to all you slowpokes out there:

I don’t have time to leave 10 or 20 minutes earlier just so that I can putter along behind you. In reality, I really don’t care why you drive slowly – you can drive like a 90-year-old all day long if you want to – just move your ass over to the right lane and we’ll all be alright! Simple rule of thumb: move to the right lane when you’re not passing. If you need to take a left turn 3 miles up the road, do so when you are closer to your turn. Make sense? I think so.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I need to leave to get my kids at school when it lets out in 20 minutes. Normally, it would take me 15 minutes to get there – I wonder if I’ll make it on time? Bet I don’t.

Smile and Pay Attention

Becky No Responses »

Apr 302012

We all have to agree that we want to teach our kids the manners and respect for others that will put them on track to be accepted and well-liked in their lives.

These are essential to being successful in life, so let’s show our kids how it’s done by setting a good example:

Acknowledge others – Say “hello” to people when you enter a room. Say “goodbye” when you leave. People love to be acknowledged and they’ll remember who did.
Use eye contact – Looking someone in the eye lets them know that you are actually talking/listening to them. Personally, I won’t hire a professional if that person doesn’t look at me – I’m just picky that way.
Pay attention – With all of our daily distractions, giving your undivided attention to a person shows that you are interested in what they’re saying. Kids – especially – love the attention and it gives their self-esteem a boost. Do this for them and they will pay it forward.
Be grateful – Think about all you have and not about what you don’t have. You will realize that you are very fortunate, which in turn will make you happy.
Be kind and caring – Say something nice to someone every day. Offer your help. Do a good deed. Care for an elderly person. It will all come back to you tenfold (and make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside).
Smile – Curve your mouth upwards and smile. It makes you look nicer, more approachable and more attractive. Try it … you’ll like it.

I have spent well over a decade repeating these rules to my kids and I think my persistence has paid off to an extent. People tell me that my kids are well-mannered, caring individuals – even when I’m not there to remind them. My goal is to continue to set a good example for them and hopefully they will have mastered these qualities by the time they’re on their own. In the meantime, I will keep reminding them to say “please” and “thank you,” to practice their eye contact and all of the other things above. I’ll do it for another decade but the rest is going to be up to them.

Things you shouldn’t say in public, or why blogging is so hard

Katy No Responses »

Apr 192012

I was just thinking how many ‘great’ thoughts I’ve thrown away because they are just too personal or revealing about someone to share in public.

For example, just today I was thinking how satisfying and comforting it is to put a Disney Princess Band-Aid on an adult boil. I don’t know, but suspect, that most who have forgone having children miss out on this self-nurturing experience. Please do not misunderstand me, this is not a good reason to have kids. Perhaps it is merely an endorsement of Disney Princess Band-Aids. Or Sponge Bob, if that’s what floats your boat.

I’ll try to loosen up and write more. Although, I do have an enormous rant rolling around in my brain about women and the upcoming election. I don’t know what is more off-putting – boils or politics.

* Coming Soon *

Another Mom 1 Response »

Mar 122012

This Author is out having actual adventures and raising children right now. She’s promised to write us a note when she has the time. (…time?…)
Maybe we’ll get a postcard….

Older Entries

Tired Mommy

Back-to-school Lunches

Chores and Salary Negotiation

Flexible is as Flexible Does

Beautiful Chain Reaction

End-of-School Month from Hell

Strangers I Know (But Don’t Know Me)

Slowpokes – Stay Right!

Smile and Pay Attention

Things you shouldn’t say in public, or why blogging is so hard

* Coming Soon *

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