Week 21 – Happy Valentine’s Day? Already?

It’s Wednesday, evident by the disaster that trails from my front door through to the kitchen in back. There’s everything…. Wet boots, stray mittens and bright colored pompomed hats, glue sticks, school auction donations, legal papers, art class rosters, dirty laundry, mass quantities of clean laundry, birthday gifts to be wrapped…. I care. Greatly. But I am too tired to tackle any aspect of it.

Today is Valentine’s Day. Already. Quite frankly I am shocked. It seems as if it were only maybe 3 weeks ago when we’d just cleaned up after Christmas. The Valentine’s Day merchandise was already on display by New Year’s Eve. And I was dismayed that I was being forced to think about making more purchases. And then the day is upon us.

It isn’t even 7:00 a.m. when my two little Valentines wake me up. I tell them it isn’t time. Sailor leaves the bedroom and comes back to report, “No presents. Cupid didn’t come.” “He came,” I assure my little one. “But,” I tell him, "the presents are invisible because it’s too early. Go back to sleep.” This works. For about 15 minutes or so. We are all up by 7:18. Sailor is thrilled to find gifts and cards on the kitchen table.

Each boy opens a gift. Sailor has received the belt he asked for a couple weeks ago when we shopped at the Baby Gap. A soft, plush thing that velcros around his waste, it has a heart on the front for Captain Heartbreaker. Originally $16.50, I tracked down this little item last week for $6.99. Good thing, too, because last night as I am reminding the boys that they have to get to bed so Cupid can come, Sailor, standing on a dining room chair, says quite seriously, “He is bring my belt!” And then, “I am very good at sleeping.”

Mac opens a new Geronimo Stilton book. A Valentine one. Mac can read most of his card from me. He makes me so proud.

I cut waffles into hearts and decorate their plates with fresh strawberries. I pour their milk into red cups. No red food coloring for us this year.

Despite this early yet promising start we do not have the best day. It’s not their fault tho, it’s mine. I am suddenly suffering from acute PMS, which will resolve itself before bedtime.

We go ice skating with Sailor’s best preschool buddy and his mom. Except Sailor is scared and doesn’t want to skate without me. Mac won’t skate without the “walker.” I let Sailor stay aside so I can skate but then he cries and yells. When we get off the ice I realize they are not much fun to skate with. I am not happy. Sailor asks if they are going to their room. (No.) Mac asks if we are going home. (No, but we are leaving.)

We make a quick grocery store run. Or what should have been a quick grocery store run. It’s not bad until the cereal asile where I try to decipher label ingredients and Mac holds up box after box of cereal asking over and over again, “Can we buy this one, Mom? Can we buy this one?” I try hard to block out the sound but I can’t and finally have to acquiesce and look at the label of his box.

When we check out I am double charged for my expensive box of three bags of organic microwave popcorn. Mac, bundled in snowpants, etc. has to go to the bathroom. It’s one of those mornings, for sure. We hustle and drive off to kindergarten while the boys lunch in the car – heart shaped pb&j sandwiches. We are right on time. Sailor is asleep in the car. The mother of the triplets watches Sailor while I run in to the school to drop off items for the upcoming auction. I have been recruited to the committee because I think I am going to want to attend the festive evening but I am quite certain the price of the ticket will equal something around the amount I usually have allotted for a month’s worth of preschool. My research led me to the head of the committee and my offer to solicit donations on my own. I am excited to have solicited more than 20 donors, some of whom have donated more than one fab item. I just wish I had the funds to bid on every item I solicited. Everything is great.

I drive Sailor home and my father opens the door and my mother takes my sleeping Valentine from me. I set to the task of shoveling snow outside our house and the neighbors’ apartment building. I have little time to accomplish my task so I work quickly, which makes the job that much more exhausting. A man walks by and I comment, “There has to be an easier way to do this.” “Call someone to do it,” he suggests. “I am the someone they called,” I tell him. He tells me I am doing a great job and thanks me for the cleared path and then tells me to come by later and get a coffee. It is only then that I realize he is one of my neighborhood Baristas. I finish my job, run in and check email and phone messages, put away the three bags of groceries that I have carried in all at once (which sounds like no big deal until you learn that there are two gallons of milk and two bottles of juice), make a quick phone call, and head off to Starbucks. Indeed I have been offered a free coffee. I let the Baristas choose my bev and specify only decaf, iced and whole (as in milk). I am treated to a venti decaf iced mocha. I tell the Baristas they are my Valentines.

I arrive at the kindergarten exactly on time. I am winded. And exhausted. We, a group of about 10 moms, are there to run the children’s Valentine’s Day party. It soon becomes clear that we have 40 minutes to take our groups through a whirlwind of activities that includes decorating a popsicle stick frame (bearing photos of each student -- some cute and some weird) with candy conversation hearts, filling in words of a poem and gluing the poem to a piece of construction paper, eating a very-bad-for-them snack, gluing hearts to a paper plate to make a wreath, searching for candy conversation hearts in the cafeteria upstairs and then separating them into groups, counting and graphing them, and “mailing” each of their 27 Valentines to one another’s little brown shopping bags, which they must have decorated yesterday. Exhausted just reading about it? It as draining on not only the moms but on the children, who had just come in from gym class. My group accomplishes everything except the end of the graphing exercise. Of course, my group is smaller than the others because one member is absent. I have Mac, of course, and one of the slowest children in the class, whom I will not name, but whom I wish had an “on” switch, and one of the Olivias, whose mother is also in our group, and who eventually goes off and just works at her own pace (which is slower than that of the two boys) with her mom. No one has his or her coat on when the bell rings at 3:15. I am not even sure what time it is when I get Mac from the classroom’s carpet and leave. We are the last ones to go because I have helped several children get their coats put together. I get on each child’s case about her or his lack of hat and scarf, snow pants and warm mittens. It is truly appalling given the frigid temps we have been having these past few weeks and the foot of snow that fell yesterday and this morning. One of these cherubs is the new Australian girl who just started kindergarten yesterday. She doesn’t seem to understand or perhaps hear me well because following everything I say she says, “Pardon?” with her cute Australian accent. It becomes funny eventually. And when she tells me her thin-as-nobody’s-business little mittens are wet because she was playing in the “snor,” I am having a hard time concealing my amusement.

Because we are running late it seems appropriate that Mac has to be at FTK 15 minutes earlier for class this week than usual. And Mac is wearing boots and snow pants, making it harder than usual to walk. Making it harder still is the fact that despite my warnings not to walk in the deep snow so he doesn’t get wet, Mac insists on walking thru the deep snow. Our walk takes forever. I don’t know if we are late or not.

While Mac is at FTK, I return a DVD, recycle a bag of batteries, purchase more non-toxic lip products from The Body Shop, look for boots for the boys (theirs get wet quickly and they don’t dry quickly so a second pair would be beneficial) and find that there are none (tho I am not surprised – it’s like looking for a shovel), drop off film, sit in the bookstore and check phone messages…. I make it back to FTK just in time and Mac is ravenous and begging for food and not paying attention to the weekly video that we are all forced to watch.

By the time we leave I am way too tired to walk home. And Mac is still trudging thru the snow so I am freezing. He tells me I am walking too fast and he can’t catch up! Sailor is in his underwear when we get home. No one seems to know why. Mac and I come upstairs to get ready for dinner. I am taking the boys out for a Valentine’s Day dinner. But when we arrive at the restaurant I find the menu has a new and overwhelming format so I have to just guess at what I want. Mac chooses fried shrimp for himself and Sailor. And a shake, of which he finishes not only his 1/3 but mine as well. Sailor whines that he is starving and wants to eat food right now. But when the food arrives he eats almost nothing. I have cut parts of my sandwich for each boy and Sailor wants to sit on my lap. I want to eat. I am served my glass of wine and balk at the tiny juice glass it comes in. The manager comes by to listen to my complaints about the menu and the wine in a juice glass. He comps the $6 glass of wine. Mac eats up and then tries to go to sleep in his chair. It takes longer to pay the bill than it did to eat.

We open Mac’s Valentines over desert when we get home. We enjoy the last of our homemade heart cookies, fresh strawberries and whip cream, which I make for the boys. Mac amazes me with his generosity. He thinks nothing of sharing the candies with Sailor and offers me several pieces as well. Sailor sorts thru things and there is no possessiveness from Mac. He doesn’t even mind that I am opening most of his Valentines for him. They suck down sugar. Sailor gets whipped cream on his face and I completely gross him out by acting silly and licking it off his face. “MOM!” he screams, “you are ‘SGUSTING!” He is mortified by my behavior.

I am really impressed with all the home made Valentines, and with everyone's nice penmanship. I know what a task this was for Mac to complete and so I truly appreciate the effort of each and every one of our little ones.
There are two Valentine's that have no signature: One is a store bought Barbie one in an envelope, the other is a handmade one with an impressive drawing of a person (I assume Mac) on the inside and a big heart with a swirly ribbon on the outside. I actually have these narrowed down to three little girls. I send out an email of investigation.

I make the mistake of sending the boys to the bathroom to brush their teeth instead of escorting and supervising them. The phone rings three time and the doorbell rings. I ask the boys how long it takes to brush their teeth and Mac calls back that they are not brushing their teeth. The bathroom is nearly flooded, there are bath toys everywhere, mail and wet towels on the floor… and both boys’ pajamas are wet. I take them to their rooms, change their pajamas and bring them back to the bathroom and brush their teeth for them, which I should have done in the first place. I kiss my little Valentines good night and retreat to the bathroom to ready myself for bed. My body aches from the physical effort of this day. I contemplate a bath but decide against it in the interest of time. As I wash my face Mac shows up. I decided a couple of weeks ago that it’s unfair of me to get angry when Mac comes out of bed on some nights. He has only me to come to and he needs me and tough love at that point no longer feels right. But I am glad that I am not in the bath. I welcome him to the bathroom. He is just here to poop tho, not to complain that he can’t sleep. As he sits down to poop he tells me, “You should buy a swivel sweeper.” He goes on to give me an entire infomercial about this item I need to purchase because it would allow me to sweep my floors without having to move any chairs. It comes with a battery pack, he tells me. And a small removable brush. “Where did you see this?” I ask him. “On tv last night.” We didn’t watch tv last night. “Last night?” I ask him. “Yes, when I came into your bed. Before you turned it off.”

My big Valentine (I asked him this morning if he’d be my Valentine and he said, “Of course.”) comes into my room a few minutes after I tuck him in. He is lonely. He is also exhausted so I ask him to return to his room and tell him I will come get him in five minutes if he’s still awake. I know he will not be.

I am nearly ready to sleep. But I am starving. My butt is numb from sitting in bed. My body is sore all over. I am looking in the fridge for something quick and I hear, “GrandDad! GrandDad! GrandDad!” Sailor is calling and it’s not even midnight yet. I go to him. Comfort him. Return to the fridge. When I return to my room there is a baby in powder blue footie pajamas sleeping in my bed.

Happy Valentine’s Day!