This year Valentine’s Day looked just like any other day, except that the kids went to school with bags full of weeks worth of handmade greetings. Oh! And Thomas wore a festive red polo shirt!
I love the sweetness of kids on Valentine’s Day. I love the tradition of class parties and exchanging cheap plastic tchotchkes.I love that my 11-year-old is still not too cool to bring a bag of cards to school for his classmates.
What I do NOT love about Valentine’s Day is the weird, unnatural pressure Valentine’s Day places on couples, especially couples who have been married for more than a decade and have four kids and are very tired. There is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with celebrating Valentine’s Day. I would never ever say no to any sort of romantic gesture, but I WOULD say no to any sort of stress around those things when you already have a very, very busy Tuesday.
Every Tuesday Tom and I take the kids to lift weights with friends, then we rush home and eat a frantic dinner and throw the kids into bed. It’s a hectic, fun night, and adding a dozen roses and a box of chocolates would only make it more stressful.
I told Tom that what I REALLY wanted was for him to grill steak. All the kids will eat steak, and really all I want on Valentine’s Day is to not hear anyone complain about dinner.
Tom grilled the steak and the kids loved it — they ate it just as fast as we sliced it.
They ate all of it, every single bite, and when it was all gone, Thomas and Anna started counter surfing for a filet we might have forgotten to serve.
Thomas found a single slice, a piece from the thickest portion of the steak that Tom held back because he felt like was a little too pink to serve the kids.
“What about this piece?” Thomas asked.
Anna shook her head, and said with hushed voice usually reserved for things like the Grand Canyon or the Mona Lisa, she said, “No, we can’t eat that piece. Dad wants to save that one because it’s very, very rare.”
