Love is in the Air (Along With the Birds and Bees)

Another Valentine's Day in the Barrett household has come and gone. Overall, I'm not a huge fan of the holiday; I have no significant history with the holiday, since I never had a "steady" until I got engaged (yes, I'm kind of lame). And since Nathan and I are not terribly romantic people, we don't make a big deal out of Valentine's Day. Our gifts are not traditionally "romantic." Two years ago, we closed on our new house just in time for Valentine's Day. Last year was a "meat" theme; I got Nathan a T-shirt decorated with a picture of bacon, and he bought me a bunch of frozen steak (that we're still eating!).

This year? We didn't get each other any gifts at all. Oops! Kind of embarrassing. We did have a small date the night after Valentine's Day though; we had dinner at a small Greek-food cafe called Fronimo's (pretty good gyro sandwiches!), and then went and picked out curtains for our downstairs windows. So, not terribly amazing, but we still enjoyed ourselves, and got good and prepared for our next home project! (More on that as it develops). Plus, we are going on a little road-trip tomorrow, and I'm sure that will be a good "present" to make up for the lack of cards/candy/flowers we gave each other.

But at least there were some flowers in our home for Valentine's Day! I got a modest bouquet for the girls, and some additional candy hearts as well:

See? I'm not a total Valentine's Day party-pooper. The girls all had parties to attend as well, where they picked up obscene loads of candy and spent the rest of the day bouncing off the walls. I swear, on a sugar-high level, Valentine's Day is getting almost as bad as Halloween! Lorelai had a small party at school; Celeste exchanged candy with her preschool buddies; and even Aurora was invited to a small get-together, in which a bunch of cute little girls decorated a bunch of yummy-looking heart-shaped cookies:

 

 A lot of running around was involved in making sure everyone got to all their parties, but everything worked out great, and my girls' sugar "fix" was more than satisfied. In fact, Aurora gave away both of her cookies and her cupcake! She is an interesting kiddo...I really think she doesn't care much for baked treats (of course, she'll never say no to candy!).

In other "love and romance"-related news, we have spent the last few weeks giving Lorelai a long, drawn-out version of The Talk. We decided she was ready to hear the "truth" about how babies are made and how they grow, and we wanted ourselves to be the first source of information to which she would turn (better that than thoughtless kids at school!). After a little looking around, we decided to get a book from the library to help us out:

It's Not The Stork!: A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families and Friends. Kind of a long title, but a good resource nonetheless. I would recommend this book for most parents wanting to "break the ice" with their kids, particularly their younger kids. The pictures are anatomically correct but not graphic; the depiction of sex is accurate yet modest & tasteful; and the information is presented in a very gentle, straightforward, easy-to-understand way. We are very happy with this book!

However, since Lorelai is Lorelai, we were never able to get through the book in one sitting. Besides our evenings being busy as is, our oldest daughter is a question-asking machine; we would only ever make it through four or five pages before her questions would start pouring out, and we'd run out of time to go any further. She was very interested in the section that described the little sperm cells swimming towards the mother's egg cell; it all sounded very exciting to her (at one point, she reasoned that if a sperm kept its tail, then humans would all have tails as adults too! Funny!). She also enjoyed reading about how the baby grew inside the mom's uterus. However, when we described exactly how the sperm cells got inside the woman's vagina, her only reaction was "Ew." Right now, that is an excellent reaction, in my opinion!

I'm not complaining about all the questions, mind you...I am very proud that Lorelai is such a curious, inquisitive girl. It's important to ask questions, and we have always encouraged her in this...particularly in this topic, where it's so important to have the right information about our bodies. In today's world, there is so much misinformation and distortion of the procreative act, and I want to keep things honest in our home. At the same time, we want to teach our daughters the spiritual dimension of human intimacy, and remind them of what a huge responsibility it is (and what a private thing it is, too!). I hope and pray Nathan and I will never be afraid to answer our girls' questions about sex, love, marriage, intimacy, and babies.

Now we just have to make sure that Lorelai keeps her new-found knowledge to herself; not long afterward, we overheard her talking about the "birds and bees" with one of her best friends. Her friend's mother is pregnant, so it was a natural topic of conversation. However, I certainly hope Lorelai didn't share too much information to her friend (a boy friend, to boot!), without her friend's parents having their say first! Knowledge is power; now we need to teach our dear daughter some discretion!  

Here's to love, everyone!!