Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Valentine's Day is such a different experience when you have kids. I remember our first Valentine's Day as a couple, when Chris and I made elaborate gifts for each other by hand. (He made me a huge card, complete with glitter and hearts that he had cut out of construction paper. I made him a clay model of Champ, the Loch Ness monster of Vermont, and we both made mix tapes for each other, with detailed descriptions of why each song was chosen...) We opened a bottle of Chardonnay (which neither of us liked) and I think we went out to eat, although I can't actually remember. In those days, dinner out was not the rare, amazing treat it is now.

Here we are now, though, with five little girls giggling profusely around us, and the romance level of this holiday has definitely taken a hit.

It's awesome.

The girls began the day so very sweetly. (That is, if you overlook how Lucy woke up and promptly removed her diaper, then with complete unconcern proceeded to urinate all over herself in the kitchen. I am doing everything in my power to supress that memory, and I think it might be working....)

Katie made Chris and I cards with little poems she had composed herself. Beth is planning some sort of one-man play that will no doubt shock and impress us later this evening. Abbie made us pictures with her signature "Abbie! Amy!" captions. (Those are the only words she can write by memory -- I have no answer for why she taught herself to write "Amy" as Abbie does not know a single person with that name. Some things are destined to remain a mystery.)

Lucy promised to keep her diaper on.

Claire, though, stole the show with her awesome cards. I've included her card to Chris here, because I love it. It's an illustration of "How Daddy kills the bad guys," and she included a pull-away paper sword to use as neccessary. (The sword was too big to scan, so you just see the top of it here.)

Later on today, Chris will make an awesome Thai-inspired mussel dish (and hamburgers for the girls) and we will try out the milk chocolate mousse with port-wine ganache topped with vanilla creme fraiche that I attempted. Then we'll put the kids to bed, and Chris and I will probably watch a movie and then hit the hay, as I need to be up by 3:15 tomorrow.

Not exactly the wine-and-roses days of our youth, but so much better because it is so....real. And funny. Chris will probably (as he has every morning since the big snow) roll out of bed as I'm getting dressed tomorrow to warm the car up for me, and my heart will melt more than I ever thought possible that first Valentine's Day, even though I thought then that I was as deeply in love as it gets.

Back then, we had all the time in the world to devote to romance. But we didn't have Valentine's Day cards illustrated with blood and rotting corpses. And we didn't have bracelets painstakingly made out of blue plastic beads. And we didn't have toddlers gravely promising to "keep the diaper on! Because I love you."

I look at the commercials on the t.v. today, with their flowers and jewelry and fancy clothes and night-on-the-towns, and I wouldn't trade a single second of this day for it.

Man, I love my family.