The worlds worst mother...

... is apparently ME!! I hate school. Who invented this crap??

Elizabeth's school has some screwy way of doing lunch. I am sure that it is to minimize allergies, but still, it sucks. There is a specific section of the cafeteria that is designated strictly for lunchbox kids. There is a shelf next to that section where the lunchbox kids put their sack lunches in the morning, and someone checks them to make sure that no contraband has made it's way into the school via Barbie softsides lunch tote, or in my daughter's case, a Hello Kitty metal lunchbox. By contraband I mean "cokes" or "candy"... complete no-no.

Anyway, of all the children in her school, Elizabeth had to make friends with Supermom's daughter. I met her (the mom) on the day that their class went to the fair. We walked around with our little redheaded daughters and chitchatted. She was SUPER DUPER nice. I really liked her a LOT. She is a stay at home mom to 4 kids... a 13 year-old, an 8 year old, a 5 year old and a 1 year old. All redheaded precious babies. She informed me that she gets up every morning at FOUR AM to get all her childrens lunches COOKED and packed, and their backpacks straightened up, and their clothes ironed. I flushed with shame as I recall EVERY morning at my house - Me, still in bed, hitting the snooze on the radio alarm because I am dreaming that I am a singer, or in a bar with Ty Pennington, or some such fun, until I finally open my eyes and realize that it is 30 minutes before we are supposed to leave. The rest of the morning is me running around, waking everyone up, telling Elizabeth to "hurry up!! we are going to be late!! Let me smell your breath... It's fine, just brush them twice tonight, we have got to GOOOOO!!!"

Boy, I can really get off the subject at hand... ANYWAY!! Haley's mother packs her a cooked lunch every day. Therefore, Haley eats at the lunchbox table with all the "cool" kids with good mothers. In my thinking, the school makes a healthy lunch, and it's a $1.25. And it is one less thing I have to do in the mornings. But how mean am I that I force my child to eat school lunches, and all her friends get to hang out together at the cool table. So we compromised. I told her that each Sunday, I would read her the menu, and she could decide which two days she wanted to take her lunch. Seems fair to me. (By the way, the two of you that read this, give me some input... what do you think? Am I being unfair? Is my daughter going to hate me because I made her eat the schools baked ham and green beans instead of lovingly making her a PB&J every morning????)

Well, so this week, I made her a sandwich, and I also packed a banana, some pretzels, and a container of yogurt. I hated to send a metal spoon that she would have to keep up with, so i dug out some of the plastic gerber tossaway baby spoons that I bought months ago for Colby and hated. This one was pink. TOO cute right?? What a nice mom to pack a cool pink spoon for her little girl. And when she is done, if she loses the spoon, no biggie. We still have a yellow one, a blue one, and a green one.

Wrong. On so many levels.

She came home and threw her lunchbox on the table. "Hey sis!! Did you have a good day?"

"NO!! Everyone made fun of me at lunch today!!"

"Why on earth would everyone make fun of you??"

Apparently when she opened her yogurt and started eating, one of the mean little shits in her class started laughing and said something to the effect of "Everybody look at the little BABY ELIZABETH eating her BABY FOOD with her little PINK BABY SPOON!! Does widdle Ewizabef need a bib??" and they all laughed (according to her the whole cafeteria) and pointed (Even the teachers, I am sure) and she was so embarressed that she wanted to cry, but then she knew they would really tease her for being a CRYBABY. And then her best friend Haley told them all to shut up or she was going to TELL. Good Old Haley. Bless her heart.

So now, I am not allowed to pack yogurt in her lunch unless its a GoGurt, and no spoons.

I feel sorry for my mom now. All those times when I would think, "Can she be so DUMB!!?? Doesn't she know what she is doing to me????" when she would buy me ugly clothes, or make me take advantage of the free lunches, even though it meant that i had to hang around the line until I could mix in with a free lunch group, because at OUR school, you had to pay by the day, so either you were cool and handed the cashier a dollar bill, or you were a free lunch reject like me and said, "Lastname, Natalie" and waited for 17 minutes while the little old lady searched for your name on the list, holding up the whole line... ugggg. Now I see, that my mother really didn't know what she was doing. And it makes me feel bad.

How do we keep up??? I thought I had all my bases covered!! What is the next thing that I will screw up for her???