Friday, February 15, 2008

The Middle Ground


So, yesterday was Valentine's Day. This is my very first Valentine's Day with a kid in school. I've been looking forward to this for years - I love making Valentines, I love making those covered boxes and cans to hold the Valentines, and also hearts are just really easy to draw & cut out.

Well, I didn't want Abby to be different from everyone else in the class, but I didn't know if the other kids would be making their Valentines or just signing the store bought Valentines. So Abby & I made some, and we bought some. We cut hearts out of red foam, punched holes in it, stuck in a sucker, made pipe cleaner bees, and wrote "Bee Mine" on the hearts. And last time I was at CVS, I picked up some Valentines that held suckers. I know, sucker overload, right?

Well, we get to the Valentine party, and most of the kids brought store Valentines. However, this one kid and his mom took microwave popcorn packets, wrote "You make my heart pop!" on them, and made paper hearts that they sewed together and stuffed with candy, and made the teachers cookie-mix-in-a-jar, covered with country-ish fabric and a picture of the kid (I'm not kidding, here) wearing a cowboy hat and dressed in a western shirt.

So now I have a question: Is there a middle ground here? I mean, is it possible to not do too much, yet still do something worthy of putting your kid's name on it? I doubt any parent wants their kid to be the only one that brought nothing but a card, and I personally don't want my kid to be the one that does it all. Of course your kid is worth all this work, but is it really for the kid - or for the other parents?? Of course all the other moms and the teachers told this mom "you're so crafty!!" I wonder if they were also thinking "and you must have a super amount of spare time on your hands!!"

I just don't have the time to do that, and I doubt I have the will to do that with 3 small kids. There are only 8 kids in Abby's preschool class - what will it be like next year when she has closer to 30 in her class? I'd better start reserving that pony now....

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

The last two Valentine's Days we've had with our girl in school, everyone just sends the store bought cards and a few might throw in some pencils, suckers, or candy. I have that time and creativity to make cute little things but I just don't want to for that fact that it would be expected of me every year and who wants to be the person who out does everyone. So keep doing what you're doing. Sounds like you were on middle ground. :)

 
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