Calling all chefs

Does anyone have a recipe for a nice aromatic dinner entree? Something with a strong aroma that could, hypothetically speaking, cover up the smell of an unauthorized, un-New-Years-Resolution-ish batch of afternoon chocolate chip cookies?

And if anyone asks, it was the baby that made me do it. Hypothetically speaking, that is.

And, also, I was just trying to rotate my food storage. I don't know if you know, but the shelf life on chocolate chips is surprisingly short. Especially around here.

Valentines Day

Oh, Valentines Day, how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

1. Mark’s dark chocolate pie (2 slices)
2. Sugar cookies, straight from South Bend
3. Mom’s Reese’s cookies
4. More of Mom’s Reese’s cookies at 10:45pm
5. ….What is this, a Weight Watcher’s confessional?
   
6. Mark's love note to me where he called me his BFF.
   
7. The heart sign (complete with arrow!!!) that Mark and the girls made for me

Five days before Valentines Day, Sage and Eliza spent a very happy afternoon making Valentine boxes with Grandma and Aunt Becca. I had the grand idea to help Sage make some amazing box to wow all the kindergartners, but Sage was very clear about wanting to be able to put stickers on and color hers. And color she did. For several blissful hours. And I was glad that I stayed out of the designing process. Because she doesn't need to have the BEST box to impress all her friends until at least first grade, right?

Becca had the honor of putting the first Valentine in each of Sage's and Eliza's boxes. And that untouchable Valentine drove Eliza crazy. She asked me every day if it was "Valen-steins" day. And then she moaned when I said no, and begged to be able to open her Valen-stein from Becca. Even though I'm 100% sure she had already peeked at it a few times.

Sage and Eliza worked as hard as elves at making their Valentines for friends. They got upset when I tried to print their Valentines out on colored paper, sparing them the need to color each and every one by hand. [I obviously have so much to learn still about butting in on elementary school preparations.]

I guess my kids come by their holiday OCD honestly because my own Valentines Day preparations for my kids resembled Christmas preparations more than they probably should have. I even pulled out the old Halloween 2009 candy that I had frozen for future holidays, but the amount was excessive even for our Christmas needs. (Maybe that’s because Lily ate more Cheetos than I thought was humanely possible for a one year old.)

Some creative spirit possessed me at 10:30pm the night before Chocolate Day…I mean Valentines Day, and I made treasure hunts with clues for Sage and Eliza, eventually leading them to find the Gerber daisies Mark hid in the oven—one for each girl. (Lily yanked three petals off hers in the first five seconds, so hers reverted to me for safekeeping.)

Sage was so thrilled with the “pink cow” that came to our fridge on Vday that she is already talking about the green cow that will come on Mar 17, and speculating as to the color of our Easter milk (which she might find a little disappointing). This morning Sage generously regifted one of her Valentines to me. She crept into my room while I was still sleeping and pressed the folded paper into my hand and said, “This is one of my Valentines that I didn’t like, and Eliza didn’t like it, so I gave it to you. I erased Melanie’s name and put mine in the 'from' spot.” (Note: the candy from Melanie had been removed.)

And, like most other holidays involving gratuitous candy, Valentines was over all too soon.

Lily was disappointed to wake up today and not find an unattended pile of dum dums waiting to be stuck into flowers, or mouths, as the case may be. (She has spent the last few weeks happily growling at all the huge stuffed bears she sees in every store. Thankfully she never figured out what was in all those red heart boxes they were holding or we might have been in trouble.)

Eliza was the quickest to recover from post holiday blues by looking to the future. Today in her blessing on the breakfast she made sure to “Bless clovers day.” I, personally, was praying for sanity to get through this post-holiday sugar detox phase. And to be able to spend a lot of time on the treadmill. Or with my BFF.

Feeling the love

I think Cupid may have loosed an arrow in the general vicinity of Eliza lately. She is full of love.

On Thursday when I warned Eliza that she had an appointment with her pediatrician, she asked me if she had to get shots. When I told her no, she smiled dreamily and said, “I think they just want to love me.”

She created her own Valentine for me on our kitchen table a few days ago. And I literally mean ON the table.

(I thought about gifting her a heart-shaped piece of a Magic Eraser in return.)

A few days ago when I told Eliza “I love it when you share,” she responded happily, “I love it when you make me food.” As if both of our actions were equally elective. (Do Cupid's arrow pricks leave visible marks?)

I remember Sage saying some funny things about love, and when I checked my blog archives, I found it was exactly two years ago today that Sage monologued about love.

If boys are made of snips (whatever those are) and snails and puppy dog tails, my girls are made of sugar and spice (or maybe just more sugar) and all things pink and glittery. So it should come as no surprise that they love Valentines Day.

But it never surprises me when Sage and Eliza decide to decorate something. I found this scene on their bedroom wall.

(Note the decorative square of the toilet paper, as well as the carefully labeled "ball" of toilet paper.) Eliza explained that they were "making the wall prettier."

And before we leave the subject of what little boys are made of, I must mention that during the entire hour of Cub Scouts this last week (which happened to be about knives and whittling) I wondered if I actually have a class full of aliens wearing 9-year-old boy masks. I, who have never used a pocketknife before, didn’t know what to say to the boys who had cleaned fish or cut into raw elk with their knives. Following that enlightening discussion I sent the boys out back for a nice vigorous whittling session on a block of soap, while I called the bishop and asked to be released.

Actually I only daydreamed about being released. In reality, I just kept wondering what snips were and don’t these boys know that they might get hurt if they jump off my playground?

That’s love, too, right? Protecting 9-year-old alien-boys from imminent death? Maybe Sage and Eliza can help me make Valentines this week for all my scouts, with the rules of knife and swingset safety inscribed in pink glitter glue on the front.