Once Upon a Time, Valentine’s Day Was About Romance and Ridiculously Overpriced Prix-Fixe Dinners…

But now that I have kids…?  It exists solely as another opportunity to take embarrassing pictures of them.

My original plan was to capture an amazing picture of the two of them together — oh yes, AMAZING — with Skye holding a sign that said, “I’M WITH CUPID.”  Ha, haaaaa!  But alas, you know what they about the best-laid plans:  They all fall apart when you have kids, especially when you have an eight-month-old whose window of happiness was diminishing as the clock inched closer to his nap time and a two-year-old who refused to pose without clutching a bottle of hand sanitizer.

Feeling defeated, I finally put some clothes on the poor baby and loaded the kids into the car to head to daycare.  “Your class is having a party today, Skye,” I told her, as the pungent smell of sanitizer burned my nostrils.  “It’s Valentine’s Day, when we celebrate loving friends and family!”

“And giving Mommy lots of kisses?” she responded.

Yeah.  Beats a ridiculously overpriced prix-fixe dinner anytime.