The school year is bit more than half over so it’s time for midterms. If you recall, back in August I spent some time plotting out my back-to-school plans for staying sane. It occurred to me the other night as I was [spoiler alert!] packing school lunches, that I may actually be sticking to my resolutions. Go to the head of the class, Marlow! It got me thinking about my overall performance so today I made myself a report card.
Use forgotten routine chart – Incomplete. In a recent kitchen cleanup inspired by Apartment Therapy’s January Cure I took down my old routine chart altogether. I had high hopes for that thing but in practice it was never terribly helpful – the kids didn’t consider Mommy-freaks-out-because-we’re-late-again as an occurrence that is of any consequence to them, evidently. I’ve moved on.
Enforce weekday policies – Meets expectations. After a few months of enforcing homework time at 4:30pm it has become status quo – almost no grumbling! And as for electronics limits, iPods are taken on Monday morning and returned to the eager little tech addicts on Friday afternoon. As expected, lots of grumbling over this one but it’s the right thing to do. I still allow Wii during the week but typically only after homework is complete, the dinner table is cleared, and kids are ready for the next day. (Leverage.)
Stocking the freezer – Needs improvement. I started off strong. I had multiple slow-cooker meals pre-assembled in gallon-sized ziplocs for goodness sake. But now I have a patchy supply of muffins, and actual meals…not so much. It’s not as if I can’t see the upside – after all, scrambling to make dinner at 5:45 after work each night is not so fun. Maybe I just need a study guide: I plan to check out the Cook’s Illustrated Make Ahead cookbook from the library and see if new recipes will motivate me.
Night-before tasks – Exceeds Expectations. I was failing at this one until I started attending to my night-before tasks (lunches, coffee maker setup) while preparing or cleaning up from dinner. (For you lunch-packing pros this probably seems obvious, but I used to return to the kitchen to make lunches at 10pm, like a dummy.) It also helps that we’ve gotten into a groove with lunch selections (see below). I now dream of creating some kind of lunch-packing station like I Heart Organizing did here. For extra credit, perhaps.
Meal planning – Meets expectations. I’ve been dinner planning as usual but I’m pleased to report that lunch planning has been going fairly well too. 8yo N completes his personalized lunch menu over the weekend (I’ll have to show it to you sometime..) so it hasn’t been such a struggle at packing time. 6yo A couldn’t get into selecting from a menu and she prefers surprises anyway, so now we have a list of her preferred foods and I just throw an assortment into her bento-style lunchbox.
So that was my parent-parent conference. Did you have school year resolutions? Do a self-check – there’s still plenty of time to bring up your grades. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have lunches to pack.
Fresh Squeezed Mom 