Let them eat bread

I'm always amazed by the amount of bread we go through around here. Sometimes a little toast in the morning, usually a couple of peanut butter sandwiches at lunch time, occasionally a slice of bread in the late afternoon to tide over a hungry child, maybe a slice or two at dinner to fill up a kid who suddenly hates last week's favorite entree and before I know it, that loaf I just bought yesterday is down to 3 slices, 2 of which the kids will probably refuse because they're ends. It took me a while to understand this, and especially when Evan became a full-fledged bread consumer, I was always running to the store for a new loaf. But at this point, I'm pretty much on top of the bread thing. It's one of those constants on the grocery list; not a week goes by that I won't need 8 bananas, 5-6 boxes of soy milk and at least 2 loaves of bread.

As I was making Evan's lunch today, I suddenly realized that this is all about to change. Julia started camp this week and for the next 7 weeks, she'll eat lunch there 4 days a week. That's a minimum of 8 slices unaccounted for. Add in all of the summer afternoons at the pool, most of which we top off with dinner at the snack bar (so healthy, I know, but it's summer...) and there goes even more. I'm pretty sure I can get away with just 1 loaf of bread a week this summer. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we'll even finish that.

This makes me a little sad, especially during this week when for the first time, my baby girl suddenly seems to be out of my house more than she's in it. ("Don't worry, Mom," she told me today when I asked her if it seemed like she'd been gone a long time this morning, "I'll be here on Thursday mornings. We'll play then.") The time when my kids leave the nest seems so very far off, it's hard to even contemplate. We have years of soccer practices and parent/teacher conferences and sleepovers and teenaged rebellion before I even have to contemplate sending them off into the world. And yet, just 3 1/2 years after our little family first came to be, I'm already scaling down my grocery order to account for absent children. Today I save a little on bread, tomorrow my kids will be buying their own loaves. Damn straight we'll play on Thursday, Julia. I plan to enjoy you while I can.