Sunday, 14 February 2010

• A Shoe Box Valentines

  Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about love. Love for your partner, your children, your gold fish. What fun! Nope. It is another opportunity for me to “Quack” up.
  
  This year we had to make not one but two shoebox valentine mailboxes. My son’s class specifically said shoebox and put an example on the paper with “mail slot here” and “name here” on the directions. I swear they did this specifically for me because last year I was very proud of his creatively painted milk carton. These people assume we keep shoe boxes lying around. I did indeed find some, although what I would not have given for my son to walk in there with a cereal or oatmeal box just to be different.
  
  I was not in the mood to paint this year. Maybe last year I was in newborn coma, or maybe I was in the mood to impress, but this year I bought up all the valentine stickers I could find and let them go at decorating those shoe boxes the no mess way. My son was very strategic about where those stickers went. He lined them up and had patterns going. My daughter slapped them everywhere and seemed happy with the way it came out. Good for both of them, if they are happy, I am not listening to them scream. Kenneth’s teacher said his was absolutely beautiful. She has been doing what she does for twenty something years, so she might be really good at hiding it. Frances hasn’t taken hers to school yet. What I wouldn’t do to actually be a volunteer on that day….   
  
  Last year I scored points by having them make their valentines. This year they wanted to buy them. Why argue? Why pick a battle? When you think about buying all the supplies to make the homemade ones and the aggravation of a toddler trying to climb on the table and eat the paint, this year we can conform. It is only fair, since their shoeboxes are covered in stickers. We left the store with Harry Potter and Disney Princesses on sale for 2.50. Yay!
  
  The next step was filling out the valentines. You can’t just write, “Love, Little Freddy” on the card. The homework assignment was to address each “To” with the name of the kid and each “From” with her name. This took three days with Frances. I give credit to her O.T. and the Handwriting without Tears program that it only took three days. Without it, it would have taken a week if she didn’t just give up.
  
  The final quacking step was putting it all together and my middle big mouth child pipes up, “But what is the prize, Mom?”
  
  Prize? What prize? Isn’t it enough that you have a mom that is willing to sit here with you and let you make a mess on the kitchen table without throwing a hissy fit? What prize? He didn’t let it go, “You have to put a prize in the valentine, but it can’t be candy.” No, it can’t. All candy has been taken out of public schools and my dear friend Maria Montessori didn’t believe in it. Crap. Because I knew it was going to snow the next day, I loaded up all three of them and drove to the CVS for “prizes.”
  
  This is Connecticut. If you don’t know what I mean by that, you need to see the selected works of Jennifer Weiner. But the point I am going to make without a lot of details is that this was three days before all the Valentine’s Day parties all over town. The only thing left in the stores was candy. And why was the quacking candy left? Oh yeah, BECAUSE IT ISN’T ALLOWED! No pencils, no bubbles, no erasers, nothing, and I mean nothing was left. So my kids would be the only kids at either of their schools that showed up with just a little piece of paper made in China that said thanks for being my friend. No, I couldn’t do that to them. I wouldn’t do that to them. I had to think outside my “Mommy Box.”
  
  Two of those little “Miracles” that only happen to moms happened to me in the CVS. First, Kenneth said, “Look Mommy! I want those!” and he was pointing to little heart shaped slinkies. All right, not my first choice, but when we got them home, he and his brother could not stop playing with the two I let them open, so it must be a male thing. Whatever. Perfect. One child happy.
  
  With Frances it took a little more thinking. As we were combing the aisles we found a box of 100 crayons, and it came to me. We went home and printed out coloring hearts. We cut out the blank ones and put them in bags with three crayons each - everyone can color a heart when they get home. She loved it! I hope some of the kids actually color the heart. I’m sure they will. All moms love that ten to fifteen minutes we get while the kids look at the shoebox that will make its way to the garbage eventually.
  
  If I ever got my act together, how much fun would they have? Really? At least this year I saw the “Red” party sign up sheet before it was full….
  
  Valentine’s Day down, Easter to go…..

  
  
  

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