Valentine's Day

This year was the 10th time Billy and I celebrated Valentine's Day together-- whoa!  We are not big celebrators of the holiday, but we do usually find small but personal ways to acknowledge the holiday.  This year he ordered me some delicious chocolate covered strawberries and I brought some tiramisu home for him.  The "sweetest" part of the holiday for us, though, was sharing it with Nora!

Last week, we were notified by her teachers that they would be having a Valentine's day party with the kids, so they gave us a list of names so Nora could give everyone Valentines.  Now that she is scribbling, and since I have no shortage of cardstock in my craft drawer, I thought it would be fun if we made her Valentines ourselves.  I was doing this mostly for myself, since I enjoy crafts, but I was excited to see how much she enjoyed making them, too.  She loved squishing her fingers around in the paint, and she was much more cooperative with making the handprints than she has been in the past.  I was expecting her to mess a lot of them up, but since she made such nice prints, we decided to keep going and make some Valentines for family and friends who are not in her class.

Once the paint was dry and I had cut the handprints out, I gave her a silver marker and helped her to draw some scribbles over the top of each one.  She took this very seriously!  After the first time I took one handprint away and handed her the next one, she began deciding when each print was "done" by setting it aside and grabbing another one.  I could not believe it.  Some of the prints got a lot of scribbles, and some only got a few, but she worked her way through them just about one at a time.

Then she left it up to me to assemble the different parts.  We were pretty pleased with how they turned out!

I tried to get her to model the one I made for us to keep, but she didn't quite understand what I was asking her to do.  She pressed it up against her belly and walked around holding it there securely.

We worked on these over the weekend, but while Dad was at work on Monday, we made him a special card.  This time I let her handle the paintbrush, and she thought this was amazing!  I am not sure what types of art projects they've been doing at school lately, but she seems to specialize in pointilism... both with her marker and her paintbrush.  We snuck the card into Dad's laptop bag, so he saw it when he arrived at work on Valentine's day and took this picture.

On Thursday morning, we took her valentines to school and all of the teachers in the toddler classrooms gathered around to gush over them.  They complimented her on how perfect the handprints were, asked me how I got the heart spaces in the prints, and one of them even said "I've never even seen that on Pinterest!"  Nope-- that idea either came out of my imagination, probably thanks to  of the Childraft Make and Do book.  As a child, I made and did every craft in that book that didn't require paper mache (which I found messy, gross, and too much work to clean up).  I loved making the Valentines with Nora so much that I hope this will become a yearly tradition for us.  I have never considered myself an "artist," but Mom always encouraged my crafty side, so I hope I can pass the enjoyment of it along to Nora, too.  I loved how much she participated in the process this year, and I'm sure it will be even more fun when she starts coming up with ideas for crafts on her own!  Plus, if she makes her own Valentines, she'll never have to give a boy who irritates her a card that says "Be Mine."  Maybe it was the early stages of my type A personality talking, but as a child I was always frustrated that the packs of Valentines didn't come with more that just said "Happy Valentine's Day." I was mortified that a boy might think I liked him just because I had to save the really generic ones for the boys I really couldn't stand.

When I picked Nora up, their Valentine's day party was winding down.  She was wearing the crown her teachers had made her and helped her cover with heart stickers, and she was taking the final bites of a cookie.  By the looks of her face, she made quick work of her mini cupcake.  This was the first time I let her have juice, so I thought she'd gulp that down, too, but apparently she was more interested in the sweets.

When we got home, we pulled her box of valentines out and went through them.  One of them was attached to a baggy of goldfish crackers, so you can guess which one she liked the best.  Her teachers helped her put her handprints on a Valentine for me and Billy, too, which was cute.

Everything is better with Nora included, but that was definitely the case with Valentine's day this year!  She received some valentines of her own in the mail, as well.  I'll leave you with a video of her showing off the one she got from my mom.  We hope all of you celebrated Valentine's day in your own special ways, too!