Livia and I both really enjoy making valentines together. I say this as an explanation because a lot of moms feel that they are somehow “less than” when they don’t enjoy activities like this. If you are one of those moms, take a deep breath, admire the things you do well (if you actually make dinner for your family on a regular basis you can feel superior to me already, I give you full permission), and don’t feel like I’m sharing my life in order to make you personally feel like a failure. So we like markers and glue and glitter at our house. That’s all.

One lesson of making valentines is to not wait until the night before the Valentine’s Day Party. Because the afternoon/evening before probably involves an appointment with the pediatrician and a child who really isn’t in the mood to write out her name and her classmates’ names on 27 cards. You might find yourself giving permission for skipping homework and counting this exercise as homework enough (not that I’d do that, this is purely hypothetical), and you will for sure find yourself in moments where you, the mother and non-class-participant, is still gluing and cutting while the actual class-participant is nowhere to be found.

The moral of the story is this: don’t wait until the night before the party.

Livia received tons and tons—27 perhaps?—of adorable little valentines from her classmates. She’s still polishing off suckers and pixie sticks. One valentine in particular charmed the socks off me, though. It was a simple construction paper heart absolutely plastered with girlie stickers like Tinker Bell and unicorns. On the other side of the blue heart were five little tic-tac-toe boards handwritten by a 2nd grader. You could feel the sweetness and generosity and creativity of one little girl oozing from this one piece of paper.

I think sometimes we make life too complicated for our kids when maybe all they need is a ream of construction paper and a few stickers.