Our Valentine’s Day (or series of days) was pretty low-key. Sydney is the holiday humbug in the family, but there is something about being surrounded by slow-moving PDA couples (this is a college town, after all) on the street that makes me want to do things differently, too. So we did little things, here and there: in the past week Sydney came home with an orchid, some lovely clementines, and, yesterday, raspberries and good ice cream. I slipped him a small wooden puzzle a couple of days ago (yes, a friend has already given me the “really? a puzzle, Erin?” look). We shared a bit of the ice cream with Nathaniel, who loved it, and the raspberries with Katherine, who loved them. For the actual evening of Valentine’s Day, though, I slipped out for choir practice, where I had a great time, and left Sydney to the kids. Nathaniel apparently plastered himself against the door and howled his disapproval of my absence for all the world to hear. Yes, an odd way to celebrate all around!
On Monday was a little Valentine’s Day potluck at the church where I take the kids, and, as an experiment, I tried taking real food, of a sort: small heart-shaped oat cookies (okay, okay, more like biscuits) and sweet potato crescent rolls. The invitation said “lunch,” after all. But I saw that my real food was abandoned in favor of sweet scones and cupcakes. No worries: Sydney was more than happy to see the rolls reappear in our house, and I was glad to have some reasonably nutritious food to keep both kids happy at the event . . . before they figured out what frosting tasted like.
Erin
Alan Schmierer