Happy Henry and Calvin-tines Day

Last week for Tot School we did all Valentine's Day themed play. In fact, we were having so much fun with all our pink and red and hearts and sparkles that we didn't even do a letter of the week! The letter N will just have to wait.

We started out the week by painting some Valentine cards for the boys' grandparents & great-grandparents. Calvin, Henry & I also painted cards for James. 

I picked up these Valentine gel window clings from Target and Calvin LOVED them. We did some letter matching with them too. Only problem was that he often wanted to carry them around the room and they kept getting all linty from his clothes and the couch! 

I included the gel clings in a Valentine sensory bin along with a few other Target dollar section items: the mini "koosh" balls, some heart-shaped "slinkys," the necklaces, and some heart buttons. I also added heart confetti and conversation heart stickers which I had leftover from last year and some red, pink, and white pom poms. The boys both enjoyed playing with all these goodies :)

After a while, Calvin took all the pom poms and koosh balls out and made "rain" with the confetti and stickers and buttons. (The stickers have paper backings so they are not sticky.)

Then we pulled out our Valentine mail box (also from last year) and Calvin played with posting the little items through the slot. 

I took some of the heart confetti and buttons along with some pink glitter and made two Valentine sensory bottles. At first I had made the sensory bottles in baby food jars, but they leaked so I switched to these little plastic jars that used to hold sprinkles for baking. 

And speaking of baking, on Friday Calvin helped me bake a very Valentine "funfetti" cake! 

The night before Valentine's Day, Hartley babysat for us and James and I went out for a Valentine's date night :) I love date night! 

For breakfast on Valentine's Day, James treated us all to heart pancakes. So cute! He thought about bringing them to me in bed, but decided that the babies are not ready for Pancakes in Bed just yet :P

He made them by pouring the pancake batter into a plastic bag and piping it like icing onto the pan. 

Our original plan for Valentine's day was centered around getting Henry's hair cut. We were going to make a day of it and ride the train down to San Bruno, where there's a nice kids' salon, take Henry for his hair cut, have lunch there in the downtown area, and maybe treat ourselves to ice cream or something. 

But the weather that weekend was so warm and sunny we couldn't resist the urge to do something outdoors instead. Still, Henry. Needed. A. Haircut. His long curls were always in his face. So I decided I could just do it myself really quick and then we could head out for a picnic instead of a train ride. 

In true second child fashion, Henry's first haircut was much less ceremonious (and also much less stressful)  than Calvin's first haircut. I was still nervous. And he wouldn't keep his head still! But once I got started it was actually easy. Snip snip here, snip ship there... and Voila!

Not too bad. We actually thought it would still curl, even though it was shorter, so we were surprised to see it stay straight even after being washed. Oh well. Bye bye baby curls. Henry is a big boy and deserves a big boy hair cut! 

With Henry's haircut done, we packed up and headed to Park Chalet for a sort of cheating picnic. I say cheating because it's a restaurant, so we get to have our picnic served to us, but that's what makes it so nice! It was pretty crowded, as it always is on such nice warm days, but we got a spot on the lawn and spread out our blanket. Calvin had fun playing with other kids there and we all got to relax and enjoy the gorgeous day. 

We headed home for naptime and dinner. Last year I wanted to do a fancy family dinner at home, complete with special Valentine's attire (pink bow ties!). This year we kept it low key: homemade pizza in our pajamas :)

I love Valentine's Day, as I'm sure you can tell, and I think Calvin really loved it too! Here's a cute video of him talking about the garland of hearts that we had strung up in our kitchen, and showing off the Valentine sensory jars. 

Hope you had a happy Valentine's Day! XOXO <3