Farrell asked last time about Valentine’s Day gifts for children. Here are some of the things I’ve done in previous years:

1. Small heart-shaped box of chocolates, the kind that has about 4 pieces in it.
2. Box of conversation hearts.
3. Plastic heart full of Skittles or M&Ms.
4. Baggie into which I’ve put a couple pieces each of all the Valentine-wrapped/colored candies I bought for myself (Kit Kats, M&Ms, Hershey Miniatures).

I used to make heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast on Valentine’s Day morning, but that, uh, didn’t go so well.

More ideas for kids:

Happy Valentine’s Day, Mouse! book by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond (photo from Amazon.com)

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I love Valentine’s Day.  “Hallmark Holiday”?  Pfff.  It WAY predates Hallmark.

Paul and I don’t often celebrate it between us, though. Some years I’ll have a yen for a heart-shaped box of chocolates and he’s happy to indulge me, or other years I’ll use the day as an excuse to give him something that took some extra effort, like the year his favorite slippers wore out and he couldn’t find any he liked to replace them, so I researched it and found him some I thought would be perfect and gave them to him on Valentine’s Day.  Ooo la la, SLIPPERS!  Slippers are not exactly the one single perfect long-stemmed rose, but they are, for me, a better way of saying “I love you and what you want is important to me.”  (It seems to me as if the “single perfect rose” is another way of saying “I didn’t spring for a whole dozen but you have to act as if this is better.”)

But most years we don’t treat it as a couple’s holiday.  I like giving a little Valentine’s Day treat to the kids on their breakfast plates in the morning, and I like helping prepare for their classroom valentine exchanges.  I like sending valentines to my friends sometimes.  I like using valentine postcards for my Postcrossing hobby.  I like the pretty decorations:  I nearly always get a new cute mug or picture frame or plate.  And I like the way it breaks up the low-holiday stretch of winter.

I’m picky, though.  I had a boyfriend long ago who would give me, like, a red teddy bear holding an “I luv you” heart, and, uh.  I mean.  Thank you for the thought, but what IS that thought?  I have said it before and I’ll say it again:  if you want something that doesn’t look like it was grabbed from the “Oops, did you forget it was Valentine’s Day?” display at the grocery store, try Etsy.

Be Mine Little Valentine Sampler by Stitched by Julie Ellen on Etsy

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The recent events in Haiti are never far from my mind these days. I watch the news and I cannot believe the things have have happened over there—that are happening. Everything in our lives seems impossibly luxurious now, and I feel both grateful for our situation and helpless in the face of such an enormous tragedy.

We watch the news at night and if things aren’t too graphic, we let our preschooler watch it too. I’ve tried talking about the earthquake with him, but I don’t think he quite understands. He does want to know if earthquakes happen here, too, and he’s super focused on whether or not there are firefighters in Haiti because I think in his mind firefighters make everything okay.

It’s hard to know how to talk about subjects like Haiti with kids. I don’t want to scare him, but I do want to teach him a bit about what happened and what people are doing to help. I want him to understand how Mommy and Daddy are trying to help by sending money, so he knows that’s what our family does when we can.

For those of you with similar confusion and questions, here’s a list of resources I found when researching ideas for talking about Haiti and other difficult news events with children.
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This is the fifth in a series of periodic posts in which I test out easy, inexpensive, low-mess, low-parental-involvement activities for young children to do. In the first, I tested, um, dry pasta in cake pans. In the second: painting with water. The third: marshmallows and toothpicks. The fourth: unspilly stuff in a bowl. Today’s test: no-mess paintbrushes.

Intention
As the package says, I will be able to “Say ‘YES’ to painting!”  Painting is something I generally (for generally, read “always except for like three times”) say no to.

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So I made some New Year’s resolutions this year. Some are lofty goals (”Start writing a book”, “Finish at least 16 credits of college classes”), some are less so (”Ped Egg my feet more often so my scratchy heels don’t snag on the bedsheets”).

A bunch of my resolutions are health/fitness related, which I am sure is totally blowing your mind because that is such an unusual nonstandard sort of resolution category and clearly I am a special creative person with many—okay fine. Baaaaaaaaaaa. ANYWAY, I’ve got 3 main goals, dietwise, that I want to achieve in 2010:

• Eat more whole foods from local sources
• Keep a food journal for more than a week at a time
• Make more of our staple foods from scratch

These are mostly about personal choices and, you know, seeing things through, but since this is a blog that mainly talks about fun stuff to buy, here are some of the tools I think will help me:
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One of my New Year’s resolutions was to learn to spell the word calendar.

Yes.  Yes, thank you, Amazon.com, I did mean calendars.  I have two more days to learn it, so BACK OFF.

Choosing the New Calendar is fun enough for me that I start thinking of it with pleasant anticipation BEFORE Christmas, as in “Soon Christmas will be over and I can choose the new calendar!”  I go to a big bookstore like Barnes & Noble, and I go through all the calendars and choose a likely armful, usually about ten.  Then I find a quiet place to dither.
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It is time once again for a post on teacher gifts.

I am sighing a little sigh as I begin, because it seems like every time we do a post on this subject we get a few teachers who are depressingly eager to make sure we know they throw away all baked goods (who knows how disgusting the students’ houses are?), or that they don’t want any more “useless crap,” or that really the only thing a teacher wants is cash for putting up with your nasty child. Well, and happy holidays to YOU too.

I am going on the assumption that it is a minority of teachers who feel this way, and that the majority
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Every year I look forward to wrapping holiday presents. I imagine Christmas music playing in the background, a steaming mug of coffee nearby, the children quietly playing with a festive spool of ribbon, the perfect creases in the brightly-colored paper surrounding the boxes, the sense of reward and accomplishment afterwards.

Ha. Ha ha. HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA.

Ahem. Let’s just shine a brief and unforgiving light on the reality, shall we? Tantruming children demanding attention, wads of dog hair stuck in the forty tons of tape I’ve used to hold together a crushed and lumpen package, a growing sense of hatred for all things holiday-related, the mug of coffee gone long cold and probably spilled down the back of someone’s pants. The sense of irritation and exhaustion afterwards, when beholding the stack of coyote-ugly boxes that look like they’ve been wrapped during Craft Time at the mental institution.

For my fellow wrapping-haters, here are a few ideas for non-traditional present-presentation ideas that might make the whole process a little easier, or at least give you the illusion of having creativity, spare time, and a quiet household on your side:
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I got the idea for this post and then froze up trying to remember all the gifts and what had been a success. Then I realized I could just go LOOK IN THE PLAYROOM and see what we were still playing with.

Parents Water Works Travel Drawing Board. This says “travel,” and it would be pretty good for travel (it’s bigger than I think of when I think “travel toy”), but we use it at home. The child can draw on one side with water, then flip it over and draw on the other side while the first side dries.
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I’m too overwhelmed with the reality that it’s Thanksgiving week (OMG) to delve into the holiday gift guides we like to post here at Milk & Cookies, so indulge me in a totally random topic, won’t you? That being: the world’s coolest children’s boots. I can’t really afford to buy myself a new pair of awesome boots right now, so I’m channeling my window shopping desire into kid-sized fashions. Looking to outfit your offspring in some weather-repelling, eyeball-searingly adorable footwear? Start here:
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