I didn't even THINK of this

Oh dear, with the onset of kindergarten in just a few short days, I have to begin packing a lunch for BabyGirl. Holy tomato! While I love to cook, I seem to have a hard time just getting dinner on the table for us, how am I going to get dinner on the table AND keep BabyGirl fed at school? Thankfully, a google search on "school lunches" and "brown bag lunch" gave me some ideas. Nonetheless, I'm hoping her brand-spankin' new pink and flowery insulated lunch bag with coordinated flowery Thermoses (Thermosi?) will be enough to keep her interested in eating. Fortunately, this is a short week and Thursdays are bagel day (with cream cheese and chicken noodle soup), so I have to come up with something for only three days.

This is not a child who eats quickly. No, she's practically forming her own branch of the Slow Food movement. There are days when both Mr.B and I have been finished with our dinner for upwards of a half hour and she's still poking away at it. We're at the point now what we just announce the end of dinner (after a count-down) and we get up from the table. Dessert is reserved only for Friday nights--to enhance the sweetness of Shabbat and to un-link the "how much do I have to eat to get dessert" issue.

Last week, Best Friend and I took our daughters to a tea and dessert to celebrate their kindergarten-hood. Best Friend had to get home by a particular time to relieve the babysitter, and she couldn't just leave since we'd all driven together. There was BabyGirl taking her own sweet time with her dessert (homemade vegan DingDongs). I finally said, with a wink, to just put large pieces in her mouth and swallow them whole to which she replied, also with a wink once her mouth was empty, "Hey, do you want to have a trip to the emergency room?" Best Friend and I just about fell out on that one. I'm going to miss that girl when she's at school for 6-hours a day.