He loves me . . .

“all the way up to the crickets”!

That’s what he tells me anyway. ALL the way UP to the crickets!

I realize that the crickets – whatever crickets they may be – are not, probably, up very far. Maybe they climb like . . . up to a bush once in awhile?

But when Jesse tells me he loves me all the way up to the crickets, it sounds and feels more like something very very far up . . . farther up than anyone can even imagine. And he does love crickets. After initially being utterly terrified by their unexplained chirpy little sounds late in the night, he grew to love them. He has been missing them these wintery months.

I think it is because I love him all the way up to the moon. And, if it is summer time and your mom tells you she loves you all the way up to the moon, you might think, “Oh, we are thinking of things outside at night that we love . . . to express how much we love each other”. And he has continued, these many cold and cricketless months to love me “all the way up to the crickets”.

What a nice little Valentine.

Almost as nice as when he padded his little feet into the kitchen while I was making dinner last night and said, “Uggh! I’m tired of eating dinner!”

Which is interesting, because I was, actually, at that very moment, tired of making dinner!

Anywho, here are two of my seven little Valentines right after we dropped the kids off at school this morning.
(Please note that little heart waffle. What kind of a fantastic mother would get up at 6:30am after being up several times with Anders at night to make Valentine’s Day waffles? I can’t even imagine a mother being that spectacular.)

And, since Penny is in these pictures, I will also include this cool “makes sense” moment I had with Penny a year or so ago (and recently re-read in a little notebook kept by my bedside to record these types of things).

We were driving to the store when we saw a field of geese. After pointing them out to her I said, “It’s kind of funny because if there’s just one, you call it a goose, but if there’s lots of them, you call them ‘geese’”.

“And if they’re in the water, you call them ducks”. Penny added.

Lastly, why is everyone so down on vacuum cleaners? That seems to be thee main example of a very bad present for a husband to give a wife. Mike and I were looking at something online the other night that said something like, “Things NOT to give your spouse for Valentine’s Day”.

“Watch,” I said, “It will say ‘vacuums’ – which is crazy because I think a vacuum is an AWESOME gift!”

And I wasn’t just saying that because not long ago Mike gave me a little hand vacuum. There is a Black and Decker outlet of sorts by his work. My little hand one was losing its ability to stay charged so he brought me home a new one – which was missing a part, so he took it back and got me a different new one . . . which also had something wrong, so he got me a DIFFERENT new one. And maybe that is the one I have now . . . or maybe something went wrong again. I don’t recall. But I love my little vacuum and I love Mike for giving it to me. And for scraping the frost off the van this morning so when I went out to take the kids to school I’d see those freshly scraped marks on my windshield and think of Mike. And for teasing my constantly about how tired he is (because I resent any tiredness he might ever innocently exhibit since Anders is still a stinker at night time so only I should be allowed to feel tired around here). And for lots of other stuff that I would write if said baby wasn’t just now crying to be retrieved from his crib.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all y’all (I think I can say that since so many of my loved ones keep moving to Texas).