The craziness of the last week is over. Charlotte is 5, she is a kindergartener, jer birthday party is past, and I am done baking cupcakes for a while. Hallelujah.

Let me quantify that last statement. Over a 6-day period, I baked and iced the products of 5 separate cake mixes. Five. 14 eggs (one called for 2 instead of 3). About 1 1/2 cups of canola oil. At least 3 cans of store-bought frosting to supplement the huge batch of homemade stuff that I used to decorate the sheetcake for her party.

I feel remarkably unhurried today. I have no evening classes, no looming deadlines, and the piles of laundry resemble molehills rather than mountains. We even vacuumed our basement playroom this weekend.

Now, I get to start fussing over something new: the lunch box. What to pack. How much. Will she eat the healthy stuff, or just the dessert? (Friday, she finished her pudding but not her sandwich, and was hungry and cranky after school). She's an opinionated little princess, so she may get to start packing her own lunch after a while, with parental oversight. Otherwise, I predict many mini-tantrums over the fact that I packed peaches when she wanted applesauce or failed to divine that needed 12 baby carrots instead of 10.

If anyone has suggestions for tasty packed lunch options for kids, I'd love to hear them. I'm a novice at this. I almost never packed a lunch in school, and at work I rely heavily on access to a microwave and toaster to prepare something edible (I'd love an actual toaster-oven and a sink, maybe a dishwasher...heck give me a full kitchen...but I make do with microwave and toaster).