How to win Valentine's Day as a mom
because Valentine's Day feels like a game of "Who is the best mom?!"
I long to be an
Valentine’s Day mom. She sprinkled her table with pink foil-wrapped chocolate hearts. Hearts hung on the wall (two strands!) and she filled her pink perfectly-wrinkled tableclothed table with heart-shaped cookies and raviolis. The light hit just right in this photo. She even had three candlesticks in the center of the table that make me feel warm and held just looking at them.Instead, I was a Walmart Paw Patrol Valentine’s mom. (You should also know that my mother bought these pre-made Valentine’s, so I didn’t even put in the effort to select them.)
To be fair, daycare is new-ish to us and I can still claim the title of “new mom” so I’m figuring out how all of these holidays work around here.
As a kid, I have fond memories of Valentine’s Day. Brown paper bags hung on the metal chalkboard ledge at the front of our class, filled with love notes from secret admirers. “Ashley” surrounded by tiny hearts. Did he notice me? Will he be mine? I wrote my love notes in cursive. Still to this day, I write all my cards in cursive because the loops feel like love to me.
My mom is and was and will always be a teacher at heart. Our Valentine’s Days were filled with thoughtful surprises. She bought me and my brother a new red or pink shirt to wear to school. She made our sandwiches in the shape of a heart (and sent me these cut-outs to do the same for my son this year.) Heck, this woman tucked love notes on napkins in our lunchboxes every day of our lives.
Surely, this brand of mothering is in my DNA. I bought a paper planner this year, for goodness’ sake!
My husband bought me whole bean coffee for Valentine’s Day (coffee = my love language). Just to get in the spirit for this post and channel my inner crafty and slow magic kind of mom self, I dusted off my glass pour-over contraption, dug out the brown filters, and smelled the freshness of those grinding beans. I watched the steam rise slowly as I poured.
Say goodbye to Keurig Mom (for the afternoon). The new slow-pour Mom is in town.
As I sat on the couch at 10pm the night before Valentine’s Day at daycare, pulling apart Paw Patrol hearts from their perforated edges, punching out each tiny hole to then insert the red heart lollipop, studying his class list to personalize each one, my son slept peacefully in his crib down the hall.
He is one-and-a-half and has no concept of Valentine’s Day. Maybe he can feel the love buzz in the air, I’m not sure yet.
Does he know that I’m the mom who brought Walmart pre-made Valentine’s (that my own mother bought) instead of a handmade gem like the other moms?
Answer: No, he does not.
Also, these Walmart Paw Patrol Valentine’s ended up taking me a full viewing of the Valentine’s Day movie, the star-studded rom-com that I watch annually to feel that Hallmark Channel love that I crave. (Don’t hate. Who doesn’t want a quality Taylor Swift sighting as she bounces around with a head full of curls as a love-sick teenage girl?!)
Do I get more credit because these perforated edges nearly broke my patience? Does my son know that I wrote each classmate’s name on these and selected which Paw Patrol character they should receive based on the flavor of their name? (Deacon seems like a Chase kind of guy.)
Answer: No, no, no.
Does my son know that I dumped out the Valentine’s Day treats he received from his classmates and ranked who was the best mom based on their creation? I ranked pretty low. Even the other pre-made Minions card came with a pack of gummy bears that this mom had to buy separately instead of the crappy (likely stale) lollipops that came half unwrapped in my Walmart special.
Rubber ducks, poppers, books, pouches… one lucky duck, you popped into my life at just the right time, Lady and the Tramp kind of spaghetti love, kisses and squeezes. Creativity abounds.
People literally pay me to be creative! It’s my job!
wrote about her journey through The Artist’s Way and I felt flooded with fond memories of my creative juices flowing while going through this workbook. Twice! I even bought a watercolor set to embrace my artist child. (That was a funny one.)On Valentine’s Day, I walked into my therapist’s office and lamented my Valentine’s Day motherhood woes in a sort of off-handed greeting. Something like, “Oh, yes, I’m so tired because I stayed up late putting together Valentine’s Day cards for my son’s class… and why did I do this exactly? And will I do this better next year?”
Her suggestion is a great little nugget I will carry with me as my son grows and I grow into motherhood (and as my son is old enough to notice more and start to care): Decide what brings you joy. Does it excite me to make handmade crafts with my son for him to bring into his class? If the answer is yes, I will proceed and gather and craft with delight. If the answer is no, I will skip it.
(Gasp.)
I will fight off all the social media comparison monsters.
I will only go the extra mile if the thought of the time spent brings me joy. If I would do it just to do it, just to soak up the memory without a photo for the world and just to store it in my heart, then AND ONLY THEN will I make a homemade craft on Valentine’s Day.
And guess what? Whether handmade or pre-made or not made at all, we are still “winning” at the Valentine’s Day mom game.
Give these a try…
How precious are these yarn hearts from
?! Sign me up when I’m a rested mother of an older child who has the dexterity to participate in crafts.LIVE PROOF THAT I’M A GOOD MOM! (I hope by now you can read the sarcasm seeping between the lines.) Here is the heart-shaped sandwich I packed in my son’s lunch using this sandwich cut-out that my mother sent me. And, yes, in case you were wondering, I did text this photo to my mom to say LOOK! I DID IT! I’M DOING THIS CRAFTY MOM THING!
In the spirit of love and sharing is caring (actually, sharing is just fresh on my brain because it appears my son did not come wired to know how to share his trucks at the library with strangers), I’m loving this take on generosity from
:“it’s our responsibility as parents to model thoughtful generosity for our children — in other words, to show them that they have agency over how and when they choose to give.
We’ve all made the mistake of overextending ourselves at some point — like committing to watch the neighbor’s dog the same week we volunteered to help organize a school fundraiser.
These situations teach us to think seriously about the time and energy we give to others.
So when our schedules are packed and burnout is creeping in, we can show our children how to say no with grace.”
P.S. If you’ve made it this far down, I love you. Happy Belated Valentine’s Day! Please take a moment to fill yourself with self-love because you are a GOOD MOM and GOOD HUMAN and you should spend a moment swimming in the self-love of
’s poem, “Bride.”“I am my own bride,
lifting the veil to seemy face. Darling, I say,
I have waited for you all my life.”
I love the idea of choosing to do things that bring you joy. My son is three and one of our sayings is "This is how we do it in our family." Not better or worse than other families, just how we do it. I hope that sticks. He doesn't go to school yet but my plan for things like school holidays before he is old enough to do the stuff himself is to have the whole family (husband, son, and me) sit and do it together. That way my son sees the amount of time it takes to do this stuff and he also sees that it's not just mom doing it. Again, that's how we do it in our house, hopefully!
I just got a new phone and did not install Instagram on it and it feels great! I do not miss seeing social media moms one bit.
Your therapist is wise. We do not do the fancy goodies bags--just the simple store bought cards, so far my kids really enjoy what they get from other people but they have never been upset about what they gave. Do it if it makes you happy, if not, it will be okay!
I did buy a 10$ heart garland from Target this year, it did feel like I upped my game :)