Happy Valentine's Day!

Julia's eager anticipation has finally come to an end. Bursting into my room and leaping onto my bed this morning to give me a full-body hug, she exclaimed, "Happy VALENTINE'S DAY, Mom!" She was so excited about the holiday that she wanted to exchange Valentines right away, before even having breakfast. And so it was that I finally got to receive my hand-made Valentine, which she decorated, cut out, and wrote on all by herself:



AND... not to brag, but I also got me some bling... I am the lucky recipient of a bottle-cap Disney princess necklace, formerly owned by Julia, stuffed into an empty Icebreakers container and wrapped especially for Valentine's Day:



"Mama, do you think that you need to give me the necklace back because it's mine?" Julia asked me, then announced, "No, you DON'T! I'm GIVING it to you!"

Have you ever known of a luckier mother??

Now, as you know, Julia has been making Valentines for the past month and stowing them away in her room to keep them hidden from us. Unfortunately, she did such a good job hiding them that not even she herself could find all of them. So, we had a little teary spell this morning, but she was able to get over it, especially when I called her downstairs to come receive the gifts I had for her.

Madeleine showed her complete understanding of all that was going on this morning, exclaiming excitedly, "Yeah, we going to open PRESENTS! Santa gave us PRESENTS and we going to OPEN them!" I think she's a little bit lost on the whole Valentine candy idea. I don't think she gets that there's candy inside the wrapper. She keeps begging me to open her presents for her. Tonight she will be in for a big-time treat when I finally do open them and let her eat some of the candy...

Nonetheless, she and Julia were so in love with, and so territorial over, their candy from me that they felt the need to keep their candy piles by their sides as they watched their morning episode of "Curious George" and ate a special breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes:



After breakfast, Madeleine at long last received her gift from Julia, the hand-drawn picture of Cowie:



"It's an ANGEL!" Madeleine declared upon seeing it.
"It's not an angel, Madeleine, it's COWIE," Julia quickly corrected her.

Despite her initial confusion over what was actually on the paper, Madeleine suddenly seemed to think it was Cowie in the flesh (in the material?) and was over the moon. "It's COWIE! It's Cowie and I love it so much! I'm going to play with Cowie. (grunt, grunt) Mommy, I can't get him OFF the paper! He's STUCK! Mommy, can you get Cowie out for me?"

Thankfully, she came to terms with the fact that this Cowie doesn't actually function in 3-D, and has taken to carrying the picture around with her everywhere she goes.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!