Baby Bentos

It has been chaotic around here lately and something tells me I shouldn't count on it easing up any time soon.  After a lot of consideration and a personal battle, we pulled A out of Yochien a couple of weeks before the end of her school year.  We were going to take her out at the end of the Japanese school year anyway, but A was having some issues with a classmate and I couldn't justify keeping her enrolled for two extra weeks and making her be miserable for the sake of proving a point she is probably too young to understand.  My other option was to resolve the issue, but for just two weeks I couldn't see the purpose in having my friend translate my concerns and make a commotion with A's lovely teachers.  Plus, pulling her two weeks early saved me a full month's worth of tuition.  I have still been trying to make bento for the kids once a week, but I've had my hands full with them.  I'm trying to keep A busy and work with her on preschool concepts so that she is up to speed when we move and she begins kindergarten.  I really need to develop some sort of a curriculum to follow so that we at least have a schedule.  She's doing quite well adding with manipulatives, writing all of her letters and numbers, patterns, colors, shapes, and working in beginning phonics.  Most all of she is beyond thrilled to be preparing to move to Germany and start kindergarten.  She talks about both of those daily!

I made the kids bento last week but didn't get to snap a photo in time before they both devoured their lunches.  I do, however, have a couple of pictures of lunches I made for C last month while A was still in school.  Pardon the poor quality - these were taken with my iPod.

This bento C ate when my friend babysat her one afternoon.  It has a couple mini wedges of cheese pizza, some grape tomatoes, edamame picks, a chocolate chip cookie, some banana pieces and a few red grapes.

This bento was C's mini-version of the lunch A took to school that day - rotini pasta with garlic, basil, olive oil and parmesan cheese, deli sliced ham, edamame and half of a mikan.

The girls are very much enjoying being able to play together and for the most part I'm pretty happy with our decision to keep them home - they are keeping me on my toes, but I like the idea of A getting to have one last extended summer at home before she starts "real" school.  If I get some really awesome ideas for preschool curriculum activities, maybe I'll include those here too.  I'm about halfway through book number six of the reading challenge, so with any luck another book review will be coming soon too.