When I was little, every Valentine’s Day morning there was a box of conversation hearts at our place at the table. I loved that, and so I wanted to find something to do for my own kids each year. I tried the conversation hearts, but the kids didn’t really like the taste. I tried making heart-shaped pancakes, but that ended in a temper tantrum. (Mine. It turns out I am more the sort of person who serves cereal in heart-shaped bowls.) I tried small boxes of chocolates (the kind made for kids, with a puppy or a panda or whatever on the heart-shaped front, and 4-6 pieces of chocolate inside), but the chocolates weren’t very yummy even for children.

One year I was out shopping before Valentine’s Day and the couple of kids with me went NUTS over the giant Hershey Kisses at the store. I went back later secretly and bought one for each kid, and they loved them, so that’s what I’ve done every year since—even now that they’re marked “#1 Teacher,” which, if you ask me, and I realize you haven’t, is a silly and limiting thing to do.

But perhaps your child responds to giant Hershey Kisses the way mine did to the boxes of assorted chocolates. Or perhaps your child has allergies, or gets too many candies from the classroom exchange already, or already gets the giant Hershey Kiss from the grandparents. In that case, I have some other, non-food ideas.

Melissa and Doug Heart Beads Set (photo from Amazon.com). (That one looks like it’s about to sell out; here’s another option, and another.)

Human Anatomy Heart (photo from Amazon.com). Ha ha, gross. But for the right child, this would be hilarious and awesome. (Here’s another option.)
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What I like about Valentine’s Day clothing is that a lot of it can be worn all year. Many little girl clothes have “Love” or hearts on them ANYWAY, whereas only Christmas outfits have Christmas trees.

Heart tights (image from OldNavy.com), sizes 0-6m - 4T/5T.

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I did well again at last year’s post-Valentine’s-Day clearances, so I have Phineas & Ferb valentines and Hello Kitty valentines and sticker puzzle valentines galore. And also I have five children in school this year, so it’s a good thing I have galore.

BUT. Considering how many years I’ve been fawning and cooing over the Etsy valentines options, you can bet CASH DOLLARS that when I have only one kid left in a Valentines-exchanging grade (I’d say “one or two kids,” but with twins in the group it would have to be “one or three”), I am going to be ALL OVER that. …Actually, it just occurred to me that my children are a little oblivious, and I could probably get a set for just Henry, or for just Elizabeth, without anyone even noticing. It’s not as if they know how much things cost.

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January is one of the more dismal months. No more decorations. Back to the regular routine. Diets and exercise. Bills. There’s MLK Jr.’s birthday to look forward to, of course, but other than that it’s just one long stretch of deprivation and paying the piper.

This is why I recommend that January be a month of small treats. “Small” because it’s a month of many kinds of restrictions, and we are not going to get anywhere by thwarting all of them. “Treats” because if we don’t find ANY small way around those restrictions we’re going to lose our will to live.

(And make sure you price it right: if it’s something you’d need buy anyway, the treat is only the amount EXTRA it costs. That is, if your regular fabric softener is $6, but the scent you really love is $8, buying it is only a $2 treat, not an $8 treat. If packing a lunch would cost you $2, but buying a lunch is $6, buying it is only a $4 treat, not a $6 treat.)

(photo from MrsMeyers.com)

Treat Idea #1: A nice smell. If you have perfume you don’t usually wear, wear it sometimes. Or buy a new candle, or get some perfume samples to try, or choose a new hand soap, or a new air freshener, or a new fabric softener. We are not thinking BIG here: even very small and ordinary things can be cheering.
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Paul needs new slippers. Oh, I know, this is kind of a boring topic. BUT: it is surprisingly complicated to buy slippers for someone who really WEARS SLIPPERS. My own, which get worn in the hospital when I’m in the maternity ward, needed to meet the following requirements:

1. Cute

Paul is a foot-scuffer (it is one of those small things that within the confines of marriage becomes surprisingly annoying), and he wears his slippers from late fall until mid-spring, and he keeps going OUTSIDE in them. So his need to meet the following requirements:

1. Shoe-like sole
2. Very warm
3. Not too old-mannish
4. Not one million dollars, because they’ll need to be replaced soon
5. Scuffing sound should not be too abrasive

His old slippers have lasted longer than I would have expected. They’re similar to these:

Sierra Designs Down Bootie (photo from Amazon.com). They were more expensive than I’d thought it was possible for slippers to be (OH NAIVETY), about $50. The blue ones are at $40 right now with Prime shipping, so I’m tempted to just buy them—but the reviews are not great, and I’m not sure what size to get him because some of the reviewers complain about them running small.
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After Christmas, when the gifts and ornaments and lights need to be put away but I’m not ready to tackle that sad task, I turn my attention to the fun of choosing the next year’s calendar. I need two of them: one for all the family appointments and so forth, and the other for next to my desk. And there’s such a WIDE RANGE of options! Did you know there’s a Kardashians calendar? an Apoclypse Survival Guide calendar? a Toilets of the World calendar? a THOMAS KINKADE DISNEY CALENDAR??

Here are the ones I’m considering:

Fractal Cosmos: The Art of Alice Kelley (photo from Amazon.com). Colorful, and cool, and the kids would think it was neat, and it looks good for standing in the kitchen staring at it while trying to figure out when I could fit in a dentist appointment and still be here for the bus.
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For Henry, age 4: Knight and Dragon 36-piece puzzle (photo from Amazon.com). Note that the box is (1) cute, (2) an impractical but fun shape, and (3) not a match to the puzzle. Whatever, I like it and it has the right number of pieces and he loves knights.

Melissa and Doug Pirate Costume (photo from Amazon.com). My parents are giving Henry this. We have the Knight Costume, and it was so much better-quality and more awesome than I’d expected. (I’d been picturing a Halloween costume, made of thin icky material that tears after one use. BUT NO: it’s like what you’d find in a classroom dress-up box.)
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Every year, EVERY YEAR, I feel like it is wayyyy too early to discuss gift ideas / holiday china / holiday cards and so everyone will be annoyed because OMG SWISTLE IT’S ONLY HALLOWEEN—and then every year I am sitting here with only two Wednesdays left before Christmas, thinking, “There’s no tiiiiiiiiiime! There’s no tiiiiiiiiiiime!!” Still on my post list: gifts that have to work for an unknown recipient, food gifts, holiday cards, holiday china patterns, a holiday craft a child can make as a gift and it’s something a non-related-to-the-child person might even WANT, gift-idea books for children, gift-idea books for adults, good general DVD gift sets, puzzle brand comparison, teacher gift ideas, stocking stuffers, gift ideas for 4/6/10/12-year-olds. We can pick two of those. And by “we” I mean “me,” because by the time you read the first of the two posts (this one), I’ll already be working on the second one. So. Next year don’t be surprised if I start the discussion in October.
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Henry and I have been working on a project: each week at the library, we get a large stack of books from the Christmas section, and then we read them and see what we think of them. Here is what we have learned: there are a lot of crappy books in the Christmas section.

I had thought that we’d have to narrow down our favorites to fit them into a reasonable-length post, but in fact the problem has been finding ENOUGH for a post. There are tons of good Christian Christmas nativity-story books, but I was looking for books more about the general holiday: the presents, the tree, the carols, the cookies, the stockings. It was okay if there was a little bit of Baby Jesus (like if the family in the book went to a Christmas Eve service), but we ruled out all the books where that was the exclusive deal. After that, the problem was just that so many books weren’t any fun to read, or were unbearably cheesy, or didn’t make any sense, or just barely related to Christmas at all.

For example, Madeline’s Christmas is weird, and not about Christmas, and it introduces a magical theme into a series I think of as being realistic. (That is, in the Madeline books a child might have surgery or be rescued from a river, but a child does not fly around on a magical carpet. Madeline’s Christmas shakes up that expectation.) Christmas Cricket started out totally charming me with both the pictures and words, but then veered off into lying to children about how cricket chirps are “angel songs,” while I was still thinking “NO, there is just a CRICKET living in your CHRISTMAS TREE, and you are going to end up going BERSERK because those things DO NOT SHUT UP, and now you won’t even be able to get RID of it because you have convinced your child that it is an angel. WAY TO GO.”

Well. We did find a FEW we liked.

Merry Christmas, Merry Crow (photo from Amazon.com). A crow flies hither and thither around a town, gathering a bunch of little items: a lost toy car, the ribbon decorating someone’s mailbox, a scrap of paper, a piece of orange peel. It turns out (spoiler alert!) he’s decorating a Christmas tree for all the animals to enjoy. This was a fun book to read and look at: the crow is sometimes drawn hugely close-up and sometimes tiny and hard to find, and there are Christmas activities (shopping, parade, church service) in the backgrounds.
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I’ve been shopping for toys for my niece and nephew, and I accidentally got sucked down a Gorgeous Toys wormhole. My kids are all out of the baby/toddler-toy stage, and a LOT of their toys are UGLY and PLASTICKY. Feast your eyes on THESE riches instead:

Small Rainbow Stacker (photo from Amazon.com)

Plan Toys Balancing Cactus (photo from Amazon.com). I saw this in Ann Wyse’s gift post and SWOONED.
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