Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day, everyone!

I am celebrating by working from home in my jammies. We may get sushi takeout for dinner. Que romántico.

Lilian’s class at daycare had a Valentines Day party yesterday. They sent home a note asking us to send in some treats, and they included a list of everyone’s names in case we wanted to make Valentines for them. My thought process went something like this:

Yay! Valentines! I love making valentines!
… Wait a minute, Lilian can’t even sign her name yet.
… And none of the kids can read.
Isn’t this basically just going to be me making Valentines for the other parents?
“Dear Joey, Happy Valentines Day, Love Lilian’s Mom.”

I wrote something semi-snarky about it on the Book of Faces, and my sister  (an elementary school teacher) called me up to tell me to stop being such a grinch. Seeing as how we sometimes (lovingly, oh so lovingly) call her the Troll of No Fun, I figured her telling me to lighten up should probably carry some extra weight.

So… I went to Pinterest (as you do), and looked up “toddler valentines.” I’m sure that you are all shocked (shocked!) to find out that Pinterest is simply swarming with pictures of overly complicated valentines aimed at small people who can’t read yet. So, what did I do?

I made overly complicated valentines for small people who can’t read yet.

They might not be reading yet, but I’ve yet to meet a toddler who doesn’t love goldfish.

I resisted the urge to sign these “Lilian’s Mom.”

I felt like Lilian needed to contribute something to this endeavor, so I gave her some blue finger paints and some paper, and let her go wild.  Kristian suggested that we strip her down to her diaper, but I like to learn my lessons the hard way.

I was too busy trying to contain the damage to take any pictures, but let’s just say that it looked like a smurf had been violently murdered in our kitchen.

They finger paint every single freaking day at daycare, and yet she never seems to come home covered from head to toe in paint. I need to find out what sort of witchcraft they’re using over there. I’m assuming that they don’t strip the kids down and then hose them off afterwards. But maybe that’s how they do it. Or maybe all of her “artwork” that they’ve sent home has been comprised of elaborate forgeries.

(Thank the heavens for washable finger paint, btw. It would appear that nothing has been permanently stained by my little experiment.)

Kristian put Lilian to bed, and then it was my chance to nerd out in my craft room. I busted out my Cricut machine (because what over-achieving-Pinterest-loving-mommy doesn’t have one?) and I cut out some fishbowls using the Create a Critter cartridge (sticking this tidbit in for the edification of anyone who might have clicked over to this post from Pinterest). After Lilian’s paintings had mostly dried, I cut out a template for the “water” using the same cartridge (even I’m smart enough to avoid running fresh finger paint through a Cricut machine). Then I traced the “water” out on a couple of the finger paintings and cut everything out by hand.

I had some extra treat bags left over from a previous project, so I was able to use those. I happened to have some pre-cut cards that were about the same width, so that was pretty lucky. I did have to cut the tops of the bags off, but that was pretty easy. Then I printed out my cheesy pun on regular printer paper, filled the bags up with goldfish, and stapled everything together.

I had to make 18 valentines (they did a combined party for both toddler rooms), but I think the whole shebang only took an hour and a half or so. I’m not counting the time spent finger painting (or cleaning up the finger painting!), because I think that was more of a fun pre-bedtime activity. It was probably more time than most people would have spent on a bunch of valentines for toddlers, but I don’t get much time to be crafty, so I enjoyed the whole experience.

I sent Lilian off to school the next morning in a festive outfit, with a bowl of fresh fruit and her valentines in her backpack.

I made a joke on Facebook about doing Lilian’s work for her while she slept and hoping that it wasn’t a harbinger of science projects to come.

(“Mom, I know it’s 9pm, but I have a diorama due tomorrow. BTW, what’s a diorama?”)

The truth is, I love having an excuse to make stuff. I’m looking forward to doing more projects with Lilian. But I will never seriously complain about making valentines.

Happy Valentines Day, everybody! Much love to you all!