Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. We are delaying celebration here until Saturday morning, when the whole family will be together. My kids have spent 2 days making valentines, and the dining room table is covered with paper. M is a very demanding valentine-maker, spending much of his time telling me what to cut out for him (I cut out a bunch of small hearts for them to glue onto things). He enjoyed using the glue stick and writing indecipherable messages on some of the valentines. But I think he enjoyed bossing me around most of all. My favorite: the black valentine. I made the mistake of showing M the colors of paper we had left. Of course he picked black! V showed remarkable artistic talent. Her choices on where to glue hearts were very good and her valentines are some of the best ones. Unfortunately, with an attention span much shorter than her brother's, she finished making valentines and turned to pestering M, until I distracted her with another toy.

Valentine's day does exist somewhat in CZ, but it seems like every place I've been outside of the US, it is exclusively a grown-up people holiday. I guess romantic love is kind of the point, but valentines are so much fun for kids. Mail! Everyone loves to get mail. The street seller I got gingerbread valentines from laughed at me because I bought 3. He's like, "So, you have three sweethearts? Or maybe your sweetheart's just really hungry?" So, I'm going to buy 1 for my sweetheart and make my kids cry. Right.

My kids watched Ratatouille today and M insisted on making his own dinner (he put the beans in the tortilla himself) because he's a chef! He wanted to be the waiter, too, so he delivered our plates to us. And now I have to buy the stuff to make ratatouille. Our small chef insists, and since it's all vegetables, how can I resist? Hurray for kid shows that feature healthy food! Popeye, VeggieTales (disturbing, since you eat the characters. The Lord of the Rings VeggieTales spoof has forks for the orcs, lol.), Bugs Bunny, Curious George. Can't think of any more right now.