Valentines Day: What It Means When You're Seven Years Old

40 cute Valentines Day cards signed by my children and packaged for school. Check! 40 tiny allergen free cupcakes purchased at astronomical cost. Check! Super adorable cards made for me by my darlings at school. Check! 

One of the best parts of parenting are the love notes I receive all year long written in their adorable hand-made fonts. At ages seven and four I get to be their main Valentine this February the 14th. Valentines Day is a reminder that as parents, or cousins or aunts we are the greatest loves of their lives right now. I can't help but embrace these moments with utmost joy and appreciation. Soon enough there will be crushes and jealousies and my heart will be filled with their confusions as much as my own. 

At my house Valentines Day is also our cat, Maggie's birthday. She will be 12 this year and the girls have wrapped cat treats for her and are wondering just how she is going to open them.  It's a welcome departure from the calamity of the commercialization of a holiday that isn't really a holiday. I enjoy that this day is a good excuse to tell others how much you care about them, but really we should be doing this all year round. 

Consider including love notes in your loved ones lunch bags, or cars or jacket pockets.Children do this naturally and beautifully. I have the pleasure of finding them all the time. I would like for everyone to make these discoveries whether you have children or not. 

In the meantime, to make Valentines Day extra interesting this year I am considering rubbing catnip all over Maggie’s gifts to see if she will attempt unwrapping them on her own.

Why I Wanted to Write This Blog

Agreeing to parent is like agreeing to forgo things you didn’t even know you took advantage of before you had kids. Like sitting down, or sleeping, or going to a restaurant for dinner that doesn’t have plastic cups with cartoon drawings on them. It’s also about being jumped on, peed on, barfed on, pinched, squished, stretched, and mauled. Your patience will be tried, you will learn how to say the same thing many times and be ignored. Some days you will wonder how you got to this point. Other days you will embrace each moment with great appreciation and an unfounded love you didn’t know existed.

Of course it’s also agreeing to be randomly hugged, kissed, told you are loved, and appointed leader of your own tribe.  

This blog is about these things and all the ridiculous, wonderful, tiring, lovely, imaginative things I am blessed to experience on a daily basis. I hope to inspire people to really listen to what the children in their lives have to say. Children are here to teach us as much as we are here to guide them. Listen closely they may also remind you of a feeling, or an idea you had forgotten in your busy adult life.

Abby, 5 years old: “I spun around around and around until I fell down and in my mind it was like I was flying.”

Now go spin around somewhere. I bet you haven’t done that in a while.