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.