Katy » 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.

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.

Underoos

Katy No Responses »

Feb 242012

I just came from Target. I knew this day was coming but it doesn’t make it any less painful. My seven-and-a-half-year-old has out grown cute little boy underwear. He is big for his age, but not off the charts big. Who gets to decide that size 8 is big enough? If you are “bigger” than 8 you should start wearing white briefs, plaid boxers, or Camo print underwear. No more Star Wars, no more Super Heroes, no more Phineas & Ferb, no more Scooby Doo, no more childhood. Time to get serious about your underwear.

We are not even out of first grade yet! So, I’m on a new mission – to keep my little boy in fun underwear. If this is a problem for you too, allow me to help you out. Superhero.com carries pajamas, underwear, and tees for ANY age. The Gap I was surprised to learn carries some fun patterns – scuba, robots, pirates, space, and geckos are some of their themes. Osh Kosh and Gymboree have a few options. And that’s all I could find.

Here’s the second part of my complaint – military themed undies for grade school kids. That strikes me as a little sick. But I’ve always been afraid of all the camo and other pro military clothing sold to very small kids. Yes, afraid. Camouflage is what you wear to make you less visible to people trying to kill you. Or less visible to something you are trying to kill. No thank you.

I guess this troubles me so because I am not ready for everyone to be all grown up. There will come a day very soon when I won’t know anything about this particular subject. My son has out grown dressing up but I know he would still wear superheroes under his clothes if he could. I want to let him.

Testing Two

Katy No Responses »

Feb 092012

I came across this somehow. It’s very pleasant to watch and listen to.
chocolate by Rafael Esquer

I think I read it was commissioned for Kate Spade. Don’t quote me, I’m still just testing.

Testing

Katy No Responses »

Feb 092012

COMING SOON! Four tired mommies tell you what they think.
Totally changing this, don’t worry.

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

Tired Mommy

Back-to-school Lunches

Chores and Salary Negotiation

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

Underoos

Testing Two

Testing

Recent Posts

Categories

Archives

Grab Our Button