Happy Belated Heart Day

So, I know it's a little late, but you know how they say love never dies or something equally cheesy, and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, Valentine's Day post.

This year, Jon and I didn't make any elaborate plans because 1) it was a Sunday, and Mondays are hard enough without having been up too late, and 2) do you know how hard it is to get a babysitter on Valentine's Day? Either you pay someone more than your actual dinner would cost to (in our case) sit in your house while your kid sleeps (and this requires a lot of advance planning because teenage girls go fast on Feb. 14), or you have to beg a family member, which means they either move their celebration to a different day or you're cruelly reminding them that while you have plans for Heart Day, they have nothing better to do than watch your kid. Taking all that into consideration, or saving ourselves the time we would have spent considering it, Jon asked if he could make me dinner after Maddie went to bed, and I said that would be lovely.

Before said dinner, we did as much pink and red happiness for the Madster as we thought she'd understand. First, on Saturday, my sister and I took her to Target while we picked out V-Day stuff for her: a new plate and bowl set with monkeys on it, a completely stereotypical stuffed red monkey clutching a heart that reads "Love", and a pillow with monkeys and bananas on it that Christa insisted she must have. Do you sense a theme? She really likes monkeys right now, or "mun-tees" as she calls them. Strangely, I'm pretty sure that if she saw a real, live, honest-to-goodness monkey, she would have no clue what it was. She'd probably call it a kitty. Sunday morning, she was about as excited as you'd expect her to be about the presents, which is not very. It's more about the unwrapping for her. Also, I don't think she had any clue that she wasn't seeing all this stuff for the first time. Probably the last year for that...

Following this, we took her over to Lawrence (so Jon could help his dad install a new window in the Yellow House bathroom), and she was further spoiled by her grandparents. Hello Kitty doll? Check. Very realistic KU pom-poms? Check. (Um, and she will use them to do her very own version of the Rock Chalk Chant, so we'll try to get that video'd and get that up, soonish.) Earlier in the week, she also received an extra-adorable pair of slippers that look like red Mary Janes from Grandma and Grandpa (my mom made them!), and Mommy and Daddy received several extra pounds--I mean about four dozen chocolate-chip cookies. (I'm embarrassed to say that they're almost all gone.) Maddie seems to think Grandma works for Nike, though, and that the slippers will make her extra fast. Every time I put them on her, she just runs around like a crazy person. No idea...

Ah, but the pièce de résistance was yet to come. Later in the day, I went out and got her, wait for it, her very own Mylar Elmo balloon! I know. I'm too kind. She was pretty excited, and since it's still floating around the house, she usually makes a beeline for it when she gets home from daycare. I think I'm going to miss the days when a balloon could make her the happiest girl in the world.

Maddie and her beloved "Ah-bow" balloon (Oh, and Daddy's nose). (Photos by Larry and Nancy Stoppel)

Finally, that evening, after we packed her off to bed, Jon pulled lobster pot pies from the oven, opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and we had dinner all by ourselves. We even ate in the dining room, which we never do. After dinner (which was amazing, and since the recipe makes four individual pot pies, I'm equally excited about the two pies now residing in our freezer), Jon and I settled down to watch more Lost while munching on homemade chocolate covered strawberries. Not the height of romanticism, but I loved it. It was relaxing, low-key, and I didn't even have to change clothes.

Lobster pot pie....Mmmmmm. (Photo by Jon Stoppel)

End note: I'd like to give a little shout-out to my friend Emily, who addressed V-Day haters on her blog last week. I completely agree with her, and I'd just like to say that while a lot of it is over-commercialized and fake, we live in a very busy, fast-paced society, and if there is a day that reminds us that we need to take time out to do something a little special for the people we care most about, I think that's a good thing. (Well, that, and lobster pot pie...yummmmm.)