Happy day of love and treats

The thing about kids is that they spur your holiday-celebrating efforts. I'm not going to make heart-shaped French-toasted Nutella sandwiches for myself, as much as I'm behind the sort of mentality that says I'm worth it. But I will make them for my kid, and I will invite my Brunch Partner over with her two kids, because that somehow justifies the effort.

So Josie and her kids came over and we made brunch together and ate it off of festive plates

and it was one of those perfect mornings where the children are everywhere and someone is always on the stepstool to see what's happening on the counter and maybe taste whatever is going on, but no one fights over being on the stool, and no one overturns the bowl of strawberries, and everyone is very reasonable about the amount of French toast they are told they're allowed to have.

Josie brought cookies and icing and we decorated them 'for the dads'

and Eleanor and Tyler got really into spreading the icing

and sprinkling the sprinkles

and everyone ate, like, two (or three) cookies and no one threw fits about wanting to eat ALLLLLL OF THEM, which...if I were only just two or nearly four...(Logan spent literally all his spare time trying to get onto a chair to reach the cookies, but when you'd grab him down he'd just laugh at you like HA HA HA you caught me. Better luck next time, self.)

And then, after we'd fed them a Not Insignificant Amount of refined flours and sugars, they all sat quietly and read books for twenty minutes. It was boggling.

I've always loved Holidays And Other Fun Things, but Eleanor just makes them for me. She gets REALLY REALLY EXUBERANT about anything special and out of the ordinary (and also any delightful ritual, like when it's TIME FOR LIBRARY TIME YAY HURRAYYYYY or YAY WE GOING TO TODDLER GYM YAY WE CATCH A BUS HURRAYYYYY). Basically she is just super stoked on her life all the time. Which I enjoy.