valentines

Valentines Day 2014

| patmcg
The girls in their Valentines outfits.
The girls in their Valentines outfits.

With Valentines Day here again, one thing I like about the girls is their enthusiasm about things like Valentines Day.  They both dressed special for the day.  Molly wanted to wear all pink, and I mean all pink.  Claire had been saving up a special red shirt with a heart on it for today.  She did not wear all pink or red, but she did wear pink shoes.  There is absolutely no cynicism or irony here.  The girls still just love to dress up in as much of a Valentines theme as possible.  This is one of the great things about their age.

We spent last night scrambling to finish the girls’ Valentines cards to give to their schoolmates.  Molly decided to do handmade cut-out hearts decorated with stickers and glitter.  She skipped the glitter due to some, uh, issues we had with glitter in the recent past.  Glitter does not clean up easily.  Molly had been working on her Valentines for a few days now.  She thought she was done after she did about four of them a few days ago.  She was surprised there were more to do.  So we set up an assembly line where I cut out hearts and wrote the “to” part, then Molly added stickers and scrawled her name “MOLLY” at odd angles near the “from” part .  Claire started slowly a few days ago, putting off the Valentines project, but got busy as the big day approached and finished up last night by herself with no problem.  She gave out pre-made Valentines cards with heart-shaped lollipops (my long-running fight with distributing Valentines candy is basically over).  She wrote a special note to her top six or seven closest friends.

I made a heart-themed dinner featuring strawberries in new heart-shaped ceramic bowls for the girls and heart-accented pot pies from Whole Foods for Kit and me.  The girls came home from school with a load of candy from their friends, and now we must battle through yet another holiday sugar influx.  The girls were so full of candy that they didn’t even want the tiny heart-shaped cake we had ready for dessert.  We’ll start up on the usual standard of two candies per day tomorrow!

A Better Valentine’s Day

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While we were all enjoying our family Valentine’s dinner tonight, we were trying to remember last years’ Valentines. After a minute, I remembered that it was such as disaster that I had blogged it as an example of how ridiculous things can sometimes be. We were dealing mostly with Molly’s screaming last year, and hoping that she would “pull it together” for next year’s Valentines dinner. Well, our little Molly has really stepped up. Thanks to a maturing Molly, things were much more peaceful and enjoyable for all…

Thanks to my working from home while everyone else is off, I was able to (hurriedly) deck out the dining room in Valentines decorations. And thanks to a new semi-regular babysitter, Nesi, I was able to prepare a proper dinner of linguini, green beans, sale, and rolls (mostly pre-made from Whole Foods) for everyone in relative peace. Claire was very impressed and excited with all the Valentines decorations. We even put on some special harp, flute, and cello music to make things seem extra fancy. Claire’s only complaint was that the food itself wasn’t very “Valentinesy”. I assured her that dessert would be fully Valentines-compliant, and sure enough, everyone enjoyed the tiny Valentines cupcakes.

There was no screaming this year. The only time things got loud at all was when Claire and Molly got silly with each other, which can be bit much at tomes. Still, I like the direction this is going.

Screamin’ Valentines

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Tonight we had our least romantic Valentine’s dinner ever.

Valentine’s Day fell on a Monday this year, which is unromantic right off the bat. But Kit and I were not going to be defeated that easily. We had roses, a nice dinner ready to heat up, and even a heart-shaped cookie for dessert, thanks to Kit. That was about the best we could do on a weeknight with the kids.

Molly was in a fussy mood, maybe from teething. To avoid a continuous gale of sobbing, I held her while preparing dinner with one arm, something that I thought was a thing of the past with our newly semi-independent toddler. Claire, for her part, was happy and enthusiastic about Valentines Day after exchanging Valentines at school, and contented herself to watching Arthur while I cooked. Kit was stuck in traffic as I cooked, but she managed to get home right about when dinner was ready. At this point, Molly was showing some interest in food, such as trying to say “more” while pointing at the bananas on the counter. Maybe she was fussy from hunger?  It would actually be good to see Molly hungry (todo link to not eating / weight). We optimistically sat everyone down at the table, Molly took two bites of food, and then the screaming started.

The screaming stopped and started in fits, but the general trend was louder, more piercing screams as time went on. There was also the food throwing to accompany the screaming.  Molly managed to bat away the food we offered her (even the bananas), with the food hitting the floor even before it reached her high chair table. We got her out of the high chair and tried sitting her on our lap to eat. That did not help. She only got more irritated, and the shrieking continued.

Eventually, I took her outside for some fresh air (for the both of us!). That did the trick. Once we exited the back door, she almost instantly stopped crying and started smiling. As Molly and I hung around the backyard in peace, Kit and Claire enjoyed their romantic dinner together. I could se them through the window just having a nice dinner. After about 10 minutes, I brought Molly back inside for another try at eating. The crying and screaming started the minute we came back inside. So Kit grabbed Molly and headed outside while I sat in on Claire’s romantic dinner.

Kit and I never ended up so much as sitting down together that night, and we were both frazzled by all the screaming. But we did make up for it later. We went out for a long, relaxed dinner at Chez Zee the following Saturday night while Molly’s teacher Angie handled the kids’ dinner and bedtime for us. Every once in a while you just need a relaxed evening, and sort-of-Valentine’s Day gave us a good excuse this time.
(todo Need crying photo of Molly)

Candy Time Out

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Claire has scored more than her share of candy lately. First, Valentines Day was a jackpot. She came home with a white paper bag full of candy (and accompanying valentines cards) compliments of her 16 classmates. I think I was those only parent who just sent Valentines cards and no candy. I figured I was doing other parents a service by giving them one less piece of candy to deal with. I can see now that this is an uphill fight, and maybe I was just being uptight about the whole thing. Next year, it’s Fun Dip for everyone!

The following day was a birthday party for her friend and classmate Georgia. As luck would have it, the party was right after Claire’s swim class, a couple of doors down. So Claire topped off her 40 minutes of swimming (well, crying) with another 45 minutes of running and jumping and rolling around. Then came the pizza and juice boxes, after which sadly, Claire could not eat all of the birthday cake put in front of her. To top it off, they sent her home with a party bag full of candy to add to her Valentines collection.

We dealt with this candy glut by giving Claire one piece of candy each morning and one piece each evening (Kit did some of her own “helping” as well). One night after Claire had already enjoyed her candy allotment for the day, she started asking for more candy. She was being very sweet about it, actually. But I said no, she already had her candy for the day. She asked again nicely, and I said no again. Then she sighed a slow “oookaaay” and carried the white candy bag over to her “timeout” corner, where we normally send her for two minutes if she misbehaves (like hockey). She left the bag on the floor there and walked back to me. I asked her why she left the bag there, and she explained that the candy was having a timeout. That nearly killed me. I almost gave her a piece of candy right there on the spot just for being so cute. (But sadly, I did not.)