Happy Valentines Day!

This morning I gave cards and candy to the girls, and they also opened their cards from Nana to delightedly discover stickers inside. Julia and Madeleine also exchanged Valentines; Julia had made one for her sister at school, and Madeleine scribbled all over a heart I cut out to give to Julia. After basking in the glow of all her loot, Julia turned to me and said, "Mama, did nobody give you a Valentine?" I told her that no, I didn't have a card to open, but that I didn't mind, because I got to spend the day with my two loves. We followed our card-opening with a special chocolate chip pancake breakfast, then I started getting the girls ready to go to Julia's gymnastics class. After I had dressed Madeleine, I called to Julia to come get dressed. She yelled back, "I'm working on something!" I came into the dining room to find her at her little art table, cutting away at some red construction paper. "Uh, Mama, can you cut out a heart shape for me? I'm having trouble," she told me. I grabbed a new piece of construction paper, cut out a heart, and handed it to her. She immediately handed it back to me, exclaiming, "Happy Valentines Day!" I think I did a fairly decent job of acting TOTALLY blind-sided with surprise.

Julia's favorite Valentine treat, aside from the Peeps I gave her, was her set of robot and monster stickers from Nana. She had the ability to mix and match various eyes, mouths, and arms to stick on the creatures, and she worked quite diligently on them. She even made up a brand new composition, "Robot," to accompany her stickering, and she asked me at one point, "Uh, Mommy, could you add a robot to my wish list, because I really want to get one." Not sure that one's going to come true for her, but I told her I'd add it to the list, of course. Here's a video of her "Robot" song, in case you want to learn to sing along:



Perhaps she should create a song-writing team with her aunties, one of whom came up with the following lyrics as a kid:

Robot, ya bought it, it was a mistake
Robot, ya bought it, but it didn't do a thing.
You was sad that you bought it 'cause ya can't exchange
Robot, ya bought it, it was a mistake.

At least her song has a catchy melody and she isn't like the student in line in front of Ethan at New England Conservatory who was making beatbox sounds and occasionally interjecting "ROBOT!" and talking about how "off the hook" it was.