Happy Valentine’s Day!
Regardless of if you have a significant other in your life or not, I hope you feel love by someone in your life, family or friends!
I believe, now, post being married, that Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday. And while my husband and I don’t exchange any form of gifts on this holiday, I do believe, that we should celebrate LOVE.
I want Andrew to grow up knowing how much love he has around him at home and to learn how to love others. So since this is Andrew’s first Valentine’s Day we are starting a few Valentine’s Day traditions!
- Making Valentines – This one I am super excited about because I’ve been dying to bring up my Pinterest board full of cute DIY Valentines. Unfortunately, I quickly realized, after a few Pinterest fails and white paint all over the two of us that resulted with one of us in tears (and no it wasn’t the 8-month-old), that Andrew is too young for any DIY Valentines. Instead of a typical DIY valentine, we did a photographer’s version of DIY and had a themed photo session to make cute little cards with the photo instead.
2. Wear appropriate themed Valentine’s Day clothes – I admit it…I dress my child for the holidays and actually plan his outfit for that occasion. We have turkey pants for Thanksgiving, monster pants for Halloween, Santa on our butts for Christmas…he needed something special for Valentine’s Day. I found the absolute perfect little Valentine’s Day shirt from Etsy (I think I need to join an Etsy anonymous group ASAP) Since for Halloween Andrew was Darth Vader I decided to carry that theme through to Valentine’s Day with an adorable little Yoda shirt that says “Yoda one for me.”
3. Read a Valentine’s Day book – I am a huge proponent of building a library for your little one and the power of books to a child’s learning and development so it’s a no-brainer that we celebrate this holiday with a book or two! I got Andrew two little books about Valentine’s Day. The first is LOVE from the Very Hungry Caterpillar. It’s a sweet tiny book sharing cute little love sayings…our favorite is “You make my heart flutter”. The second book we got was Huggy Kissy. This book teaches us all the different types of hugs and kisses we can get from all the different people in our lives. I personally enjoy acting out all the different ways to hug and kiss Andrew and so far he’s not complaining.
4. Valentine’s Day Treats – Again, this one I will confess that I have a huge Pinterest board just full of yummy treats to make with Andrew when he gets older. But…this year, trying to avoid the same issues we had with making Valentine’s and since we only have the inkling of teeth to enjoy any of these treats we are enjoying some mushed up strawberries as our treat this year. Time will come when we will be decorating cookies or bars for his friends and I will be ready; Pinterest board in hand, for those moments.
What fun things do you do with your little ones for Valentine’s Day?