Valentine's Day Romance (Parent-Style)

Trevor and I always pretend we're not interested in Valentine's Day, in the interest of saving money and by telling ourselves that we're so darn in love that every day is like Valentine's Day. (Please imagine the look I'm shooting you via the computer right now.)

Helpfully, I don't like to get flowers. I don't like spending money on a gift that dies after a few days, but mostly I don't like receiving something that DIES. Every time I see cut flowers I think of how they were recently growing in the soft, dirty dirt and basking in the warmth of the sun (or at least of a balmy greenhouse) and then SNAP! They're cut, rolled up in dry paper and put on display for all to witness their withering death. (Good for roses, with their prickly thorns. They should at least impart a little pain for their suffering.) Trevor likes this aversion to cut flowers, because he doesn't have to fork out the cash for them at every minor holiday. 

But flowers do not a holiday make, and when the big day rolls around with all of its love and fluff and commercialism, neither Trevor nor I can help wanting a tiny, little treat from the other one. This year we've decided to go out for brunch after church today (that he and Berit are attending, because Marta is sleeping and I am hand-washing the floor, as we are out of Swiffer wet cloths and oddly enough, we no longer own a mop). But I thought I would give you an idea of the past two days of Valentine celebrations for a laugh, because truly, it's just life.

Friday, February 13 (Pretend Valentine's Day, because we don't need two days of sugar for the kids, and we have a party this day)

5:30 a.m.: Marta wakes. I preheat the oven and start making heart-shaped cupcakes.

6:30 a.m.: Berit and Trevor wake. Everyone wants cupcakes for breakfast. I let them eat the ones that crumble out of the heart-shaped molds.

10:30 a.m.: Valentine's Day party at Emma and Andrew's house. Bargain with Berit to eat her lunch, because there are sweets everywhere. Several runny noses attached to hand-holding, toy-sharing children run around the house. Babies share cups. Moms groan and laugh. Why not? We're tired. We made cupcakes at a-quarter-to-six this morning.

3:30 p.m.: Trevor watches the girls while I go to my orthodontist's office for a quick wire-snipping. Suddenly I remember that I have no valentine for Trevor. Quick stop at bookstore turns into long, Valentine's Day gift spending spree.

5:30 p.m.: Dinner is over; girls each open a foil-wrapped chocolate heart. They each get books. Trevor gets a card (more funny than romantic), beer brittle and Tom's Natural Licorice (more for me than him). Berit gets an Izzy and Trevor a grape Crush. Marta gets thin, crackery breadsticks. Trevor receives a valentine from Berit that reads, "To Prince Charming, Love Cinderella." I made it, even the very detailed renderings of Cinderella and Prince Charming on the front. Berit scribbled two lines on it, but was more interested in telling me how many birds needed to be perched on Cinderella's hands than actually making it for her father.

9 p.m.: Trevor goes into the bedroom to shower. I pick up the various pieces of dirty laundry strewn about the house and take them into the room to put in the hamper. As I walk into the bedroom (no, no sexy rose petals or soft music playing, don't worry), Trevor, in his underwear, says "STOP!" He's writing my card. I go into the living room, and he brings it out. For once, it's not funny. It's not really romantic, either. I get the feeling it's the first one on the shelf (unlike him, but possibly because he was in a hurry to get home so I could leave for my ortho appointment). We smile, goofily. Heh. Valentine's Day cards.

Saturday, February 14 (actual Valentine's Day)

8 a.m.: I go spinning. Since it's Valentine's Day and I did not receive any treats from my husband or cards from my children, I take myself out to breakfast afterward. (Technically I run into the coffee shop, order a coffee and egg wrap to go, and eat it in the car on the way home.) 

3:30 p.m.: We take the kids to the waterpark, which is packed with bullies and wicked children who try to shoot waterguns at our tiny baby and dump huge buckets of water from high jungle gyms onto our sensitive toddler's head.

4:30 p.m.: We leave the waterpark. Nothing like changing the whole family into swimsuits and out of swimsuits in one hour's time. 

5 p.m.: We go out for dinner at.... Big Boy. The place is filled with people who feel that Big Boy is the place to go on Valentine's Day. (Parents with children. The very old. High school sophomores.) As Marta throws her food on the floor and Berit is too cold/too hot/too cold/too hot and needs her coat put on/taken off/put on/taken off, I look at Trevor over my "cheesey spinach soup" (Velveeta and minute specks of previously frozen spinach) and his "lumberjack potato pancakes" (insanely delicious, of course) and say, "Happy Valentine's Day." And we laugh so hard that we choke, and the girls stop misbehaving and laugh, too. 

Oh, the... love. It's just... never-ending. It's as if every day is Valentine's Day, isn't it? 

Trevor Time

A couple of days ago I opened a box of organic tomato bisque for the girls and me for lunch. Afterwards, I put the remaining soup, still in its box, in the refrigerator. 

The next day, Trevor hung out with the girls while I took the computer to a coffee shop to get some work done. I came home and he said, "That soup was really good. I had it for lunch." I was pleased because he's not always such a willing participant in my enforcement of almost entirely organic eating. (He likes to eat junk, made from junk dye #49 and junks fats and junk fructose junk syrup.)

Later that evening I took the soup out of the fridge, thinking I'd finish it off at dinner time, since the girls were eating grilled cheese and I wasn't planning on cooking. Trevor saw me and said, "Did you add cream to that soup? Mine was darker." And I said "No, straight from the box."

And Trevor said, "Oh, I got mine from the bowl."

And I said, "Well, then yours was darker because you ate straight tomato paste."

And Trevor said, snottily, "WELL, it was pretty GOOD."

Typical

This morning:

Me: "Trev, today I really want to give the house a good cleaning, then I'm going to go someplace quiet to write for a couple hours, so I can get a few freelance projects wrapped up."

Trevor: "OK. You want to take the girls to Traverse City instead?"

Me: "YES."

On the Up and Up

I really, really don't want to jinx things, but no one has gotten sick, and today is Day Five. So I feel like we might be looking at brighter days ahead -- both figuratively and literally, since today is in the high 20s and this weekend is forecasted to be in the 40s!

Marta does have a little sniffly cold, which is weird because we have been NOWHERE all week, but whatever, it's easy-peazy compared to the throw-up scare. 

I'm now faced with a house full of stomach flu supplies, like bedroom floors lined with old towels, miscellaneous bowls and pots wherever the kids sleep and play, and a plain old mess from being cooped up in the same handful of rooms all week. 

I've currently got chicken marinating and the rest of tonight's dinner ingredients set out on the counter, but since Trevor came home from work early and took Berit to the waterpark and dinner, I think I'm just going to have cookies and call it a night. This weekend is full of promise, with a clean house just hours away, the sunshine streaming in, and everyone (for the most part) healthy. Ah, we're back to normal.

C'est Fin

Yesterday Morning:

Berit: "I need to use the potty."

Me: "Oh, yeah, OK. Go ahead."

Berit: Does. For the rest of the day. Even in public. Is continuing to do so.

Just like that.

Groundhog's Day

Last summer, sprinklers were an issue. Whenever I put the sprinkler on the lawn -- as in, every day -- we told Berit she could play in it. And, even on the hottest days, when she was truly considering it, she wouldn't go near the water. 

Every now and then, when passing a neighbor's sprinkler that was set up at the edge of the road to water toward their house (as in, it wouldn't sprinkle toward us, only away), Berit would come with me and ever-so-gently touch the spray of water coming off the big streams. 

We talked about sprinklers, showed her how they worked, whatever she wanted us to do to help her feel comfortable being outside at the same time the sprinkler was on. 

And yesterday, while we were eating lunch, I said, "...It's like a sprinkler." And she said in pure innocence, "Mom, what's a sprinkler?"

I said, "You know, a sprinkler -- with water? Like the one from outside?"

And she had no idea what I was talking about.

This kind of thing has happened lately with her memory. Things we did last summer or a year ago are completely wiped clean, and we teach it to her all over again. It's so funny! 

Sick and Crazy

On Sunday night I once again met up with my old friend Stomach Flu, who held my full attention for 12 straight hours. It's the second time SF and I have had the pleasure of sharing the same human body this season, and I can't tell you how much I enjoy the surprises SF brings. Like, will it be throw-up? Will it be *other*? Will it be both at once?

Anyway, now I'm waiting. Waiting, of course, for my children to start vomiting in the middle of the night and continue to do so all over the house for 12 straight hours. It's not the mess factor I hate (though I don't really know anyone who loves to scrub throw-up out of carpeting). It's the anticipation. It's going to bed at night, exhausted, pushing the monitor button to eyeball the kids one last time before leaving their awakenings up to my ears only, and snapping to attention because I realize that at any moment they could wake up covered in throw-up, screaming. Their bedding needs washing immediately, their pjs are stuck to their bodies, there's throw-up in every crevice/nostril/fingernail on their bodies and they really, really need a bath but all they want to do is be held and go to sleep. And then it happens again and again, because they are babies and don't realize that they should just get up and throw-up in the bathroom like civilized people. 

Neither of my children has ever begun their stomach flu bouts during the daytime. Have yours? I don't know why it's always nighttime, when they're so unsuspecting, so untelling of mysterious symptoms. It wouldn't be so bad if they woke up in the morning, threw up and spent the next 12 hours sick. At least then we could watch them constantly. But what am I saying? I DO watch them constantly, even at night. I am glued to those monitors with every sniffle, every coo, every shuffle of the blankies. 

I'm living in such fear of the SF that I've got both of their bedrooms tricked out in case of illness. They've got pots for us to hold once we've got a system down, old towels covering the carpeting, blankets already laid out as beds for me or Trev to lay on, waters ready. And I will be so, so pleased to not have to use them. 

I figure I've got until Friday before we're home-free. Unless, of course, today one child becomes infected but fights it off silently and then infects the other on Saturday or something. Does this even happen? All I know is the last time we got the stomach flu, each of us got it exactly four days apart. It's only Wednesday and we're already going stir crazy, trapped in the house! (Though at -19 --YES, NEGATIVE NINETEEN -- we're not going far anyway.)

In other news, Berit and I were crafting today and it occurred to me that she is in no way interested in playing anything at all if it can't be made into "house." For example, we played Play-Doh yesterday, and we could only make balls of various sizes to represent mommies, daddies and kids, and then we had to play with them like they were those people. And then today I got out the glue, paper, macaroni and fuzzy balls and tried to help her make something, and she did stick a few pieces of macaroni onto the glue, but mostly gathered up the fuzzy balls, named them and played house with them. I ended up just drawing different scenes onto construction paper and letting her pretend it was a dollhouse for her... fuzzy craft balls. I tried getting her to match things, notice similarities and differences, pick out textures, even make a mess with the glue, but nothing doing. Just house. What does this mean? There are very few math skills being built up in playing house. Will she not be the famous heart surgeon who travels the world healing impoverished nations that I had planned? Will she be a mere (gasp) housewife who thrives on putting babies into cradles, taking them out, and putting them back in?

Have we been cooped up too long, living in fear of the vomit? Am I making up mirages to analyze out of boredom?? Am I suffering from lack of sleep, lack of inspiration, lack of protein due to my week-long enforcement of the BRAT diet?