As I gazed upon the hideous paper mess on my school room table this morning, I remembered my first foray into toddler crafts. The year was 2004. Ian was 21 months old and Shane was 5 1/2 months old. I took them into the craft store and bought red tempera paint and blank cards. My great idea was to make Valentine's cards with Ian's hand prints and Shane's footprints. It was the first time one of my great ideas turned into a "what was I thinking" moment. Ian wanted to flip the paint tray over and smear paint all over the house. He screamed when I wouldn't let him and he ended up in the bathtub quickly enough. Shane cried when I stuck his foot in the paint. The result was a bunch of smeary cards that I lovingly labeled and mailed off to all our relatives.
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| 2004: We are all so young and naive |
I didn't learn anything from that experience (but I never mailed off Valentine's cards again). I still let them paint as toddlers and I still let my current toddlers paint. And cut. And glue. And color with markers (every single thing I own has been tagged by a toddler graffiti artiste). Right now their messes don't bother me, but ask me again next week. I might change my mind! This afternoon, I caught Lula pouring school glue into a cup full of pennies. I'll clean it up tomorrow (wink, wink).
Daniel has been a bit of a stinker about Valentine's Day. I made him (and the rest of the kids) Valentine's Day cards out of the paper mess on the table and the first thing Daniel did was drop it on the floor and say it was a piece of garbage. Rat. Then while we were snuggling (because yes, I don't take anything he says seriously) he said that I was fat, but at least people who were attacking me could bounce off my fat as my defense so it might not be too bad. When he wanted to watch more and more TV, I decided it was time for us to go outside. But the thing about Daniel is, is that if I want him to go outside, I can't just say, "Let's go play outside," because he will say NO and come up with a water-tight reason to not go outside. This time, I said, "We are going outside. I'm going to chase you around the house four times. Then you will chase me around the house once. How many times are we going to run around the house?"
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| And he was gone! (this is quite possibly my most favorite picture of Daniel ever) |
Then we just enjoyed being out in the fresh air and let the chickens out to eat some fresh grass while the dogs were locked inside. When the dogs are inside, Ling Ling comes down for a visit.
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| I'm thinking she might start avoiding Lula now too... |
Now, this is what my real Valentine and I did today: We packed up the babies and drove out to the library, the appliance parts store, Fred Meyer, and Costco. We returned an overdue movie, bought a part for the broken (again) dryer, returned shirts that were too big, and bought food and diapers. There is nothing like spending quality time with my love getting things done.
As soon as we got home, I pulled the drum out of the dryer while he got the food put away and wrangled the four older kids for taekwondo. He left again while I stayed home with the three little ones. When he got back, we made pizza for dinner and got on our screens. Today was just another normal day, but getting to spend it thinking more lovey dovey thought made it that much more special!
