Happy Valentine’s Day!

We are not big holiday people. It isn’t that I don’t like holidays- I love them, actually. There is something so fun about making an ordinary day into something special. Secretly I really, really want to be a holiday person.

It’s just that I can never get my sh!t together enough to prepare for them. So while other people are out there planning in advance what adorable V-day crafts they’ll make for with their kids, what foods they can shape into four-leaf clovers and/or leprechauns for St. Paddy’s, and ensuring that their 4th of July barbeque will have perfectly coordinated tablecloths and napkins… I’m sitting on the couch at 7:45pm on February 13th and saying to my husband, “Crap! I forgot that Mini-Me asked me if we were going to have a special decorated Valentine’s Day breakfast again. And I said yes. Would you mind running to Target for me while I feed Spike?”

That’s how I roll.

You see, last year I went to Target the night before V-day (notice a trend?) and they had all sorts of cute Valentine’s Day stuff and I threw together a loosely color-coordinated and themed “tablescape.” Please note that I use the world tablescape very, very loosely. And, apparently, Mini-Me has held onto this memory. I guess now that I’ve done it two years in a row it’s a thing. This will be our V-Day tradition.

I find myself simultaneously proud of myself for being one of those mothers that has holiday traditions for her kids and also kind of like I’ve painted myself into a corner here. Because now I think that I’ll have to do it every year. I adore my kids but I’m worried that after a few years they’ll realize that I’m not actually a good party planner and just have a dab hand with the streamers. Then they’ll feel bamboozled. And all my money will go into their therapy.

Who am I kidding? They’ll probably be in therapy anyway.

Nevertheless, we did have a lovely time at breakfast this morning. These boys (plus Sergeant Handsome, who is the one that actually ran to Target this year) are the lights of my life.

 

This sums up our morning so far: Chuckles is not pictured because he is too busy running around the house to stop for a photo. Spike is unimpressed with his brothers’ constant desire to hold him. He’s also unimpressed with shirts, as evidenced by his spitting up all over the one he had been wearing right before this photo. Also not pictured is my mom, who was doing FaceTime with us when I took that picture of the three boys.

And that sweet valentine up in the upper left-hand corner? Fidget made that for me this morning, without any prompting from me, and it made me cry because I’m a sap and it just made me feel so lucky to have them all. It reads: “Mommy, be my valentine.”

Any day, buddy. Any day.