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Community Corner

Failure to Lunch

From gourmet to boxed lunches

Because my daughter starts kindergarten in the fall, this summer has been a huge and very challenging transition time.

Not because she has changed schools — she’s staying at her current school through kindergarten and will be there all summer. Not because her friends have moved on to other schools. Some of them have, but her closest friends will be staying at school with her for the next year. The challenge has not even been the elimination of nap time, which is a change instituted about two weeks ago. Worried this was going to be tough on my daughter, I approached the discussion gingerly, patiently explaining she would not have a time during the day to rest anymore. Fortunately, she received the news by releasing a relieved sigh and stating very dramatically, “I’ve been waiting for this all my life.”

No — the major transition that has affected all of us to an extent we never would have imagined is we now have to pack a lunch for her every.single.day.

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For the past couple of years, we have all been spoiled, as daily lunch was provided to her by, I kid you not, a French chef who works at the school. But as with all the best things in life that evaporate with age, such as having people who praise everything you do and running around un-self-consciously in a bathing suit, those days are now over.

My husband and I have a hard enough time getting our own lunches packed and getting out the door in the morning without having to come up with inventive and healthy lunches for someone else. And of course, there are always the overachieving parents of her classmates who send their children in with sandwiches cut into fancy shapes and even pack themed lunches, which my daughter then requests. The pressure to keep up is what causes me to run around like a mental patient in the early morning hours.

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Well, it is one of the reasons, anyway.

Please don’t misunderstand. We have not become totally ridiculous in our quest to keep our daughter’s palate happy and her little tummy full.

On that note, does anyone have a good idea for an amuse bouche that packs well in a Hello Kitty lunch box?

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