Newsworthy?

Not really. Husband's traveling and kids were so tired they were in bed by 7:30...so here I am. Today was a good day. I was able to spend some time volunteering at the kids' school. A lot of moms are up at the school almost every day in some capacity, but because I have a 3rd little monkey not yet in school, I am generally excused. Last year I rarely volunteered and when I did, I brought Sarah along as distracting as she could be, but this year I am making a point to be as involved as I can without going overboard. Fine line I'm walking.
I volunteered in Hannah's library class. So much fun, so little attention span. But they are delightful. After library with PreK, I headed over to the cafeteria for lunch duty. Thursday is Frites Day in the cafeteria and therefore the most popular day for hot lunch. I had no idea what to expect whilst on "lunch duty". Quite an interesting experience. Grades 1-5 all eat at the same time in the same place, which is not so big. The hot lunch trays are prepared ahead of time in a chaotic assembly line fashion by members of the staff and us volunteer moms...at least partially ahead of time. Then the kids come in and keep coming and keep coming. Strangely, it was not madness. They all sit down in some sort of order that I am not aware of, but they seem to be. Then the hands start going up. We, the volunteers, are to respond to all of the raised hands as we finish the organized chaotic assembly line serving. I felt like the Genie from Aladdin, "Poof! What do you need?" "Poof! What do you need?" It was also vaguely reminiscent of my kitchen at home, but on a slightly larger scale. It must be the best way to manage that many kids in that amount of time and that amount of space. At first glance, it doesn't appear to be the most logical system, but they are the educators and they have the experience. What do I know? The hard part was that one of the volunteer's duties is to make sure the kids eat "enough". Huh? At first glance, I thought the serving sizes were huge...way more than my kids would eat, but Grades 1-5 covers quite a large range and some did ask for seconds so... Also we were incredibly outnumbered. No way we could check on all of them. I did ask a few kids to take a bite of the "veal au vent" when I could see that it hadn't been touched and their forks weren't even dirty. I got one of several responses: 1. "I'm not hungry" 2. "I tried it, but I didn't like it" 3. Responses I was unable to determine as they were not in English 4.Or a blank stare....So if they're not hungry, they're not hungry. If they tried and don't like it, oh well. If they didn't answer in English, I'm sure their explanation was just as good as the first two and if they didn't answer at all, well...We don't battle with meals much at home so I might not be the best person for this job. It is very underpaid, anyway. Ha ha ha.
After the students were dismissed in another organized chaos I did NOT get, we volunteers cleared all of the trays and cups for the kids. Now this is where I feel we might be doing these kids a slight disservice. From kindergarten on, if I ate a meal from the cafeteria, I had to carry my own tray and put it away. I think we even threw our trash away. Excuse me, put our rubbish in the bins. But to be fair, these trays were not like the ones I used with little compartments to hold the food. They were just large flat trays with glass dishes on them. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why they might not want kids carrying them across the cafeteria in any sort of organized anything. So we did it. Then to the playground. I assumed I was there to keep an eye on things, but there were several other parents and a teacher there so it looked pretty under control. I was about to slip away to pick up my little one who would be needing a nap very shortly, when I saw a child (one who had just been playing with my son in fact) walk by with a bloody nose. Great. Clearly I was doing a super job. So I directed him to the school nurse and found my son to make sure he had nothing to do with it. He was unaware and the teacher rang the bell at that moment so I gave him a hug and headed out.
Although it isn't something I'll be doing very often, I really enjoyed just being there. I know it won't be long until I am not welcomed at school. I will be "Soooooo embarrassing". So for now, it is nice to see their eyes light up when Mommy comes to school for the day.
I picked up a happy little one from the creche and took her home for a nap. I had every intention of working out during her nap, but decided instead to make our blog look pretty. Tonight I actually finished labeling all of our pictures from August. Yes, I'm still suffering from that condition. I've been trying to get a good video of Sarah doing some of her cute stuff, but as soon as the camera comes out, she stares blankly at us as we ask her to perform,"Come on, dance again! Come on say 'Backpack'! Come on spit after you brush your teeth!". Oh well, she really can do some stuff, we promise. Instead I am sharing a video of our dinner with a guest tonight. Every time we have a friend for dinner, it is a bit more, shall I say relaxed...Just so you know I did have to be a bad guy and calm everyone down before it got out of hand, but I had to enjoy the laughter for just a minute or two.