New Mom Valentine’s Day: Like an EMPTY box of chocolates?

Am I the only new mom who got her butt kicked by Valentine’s Day? In my before-baby life, I thought of this holiday-of-love as an added excuse to be playfully naughty+nice with my Hubby. Yesterday yielded no such results. The box of chocolates was empty (mostly because I ate them all, but whatever.) Welcome to parenthood, right?

That’s not to say that I didn’t have a good day: LadyP and I had fun on a stroll in the sunshine and picked up some fancy-schmancy Italian appetizers, wine and ooey-gooey Crumbs cupcakes to surprise our man of the house when he got home from work.

My big V-Day fantasy consisted of getting my goods, getting home by 3pm (to put LadyP down for a nap), getting myself cute (shower, hair, high-heels and all)… while having enough time to do a huge antipasto-display on our wedding china for when Hubby walked through the door. I’d then put LadyP to bed, followed by… well, use your imagination and fill-in the blank. HA. HA. HA. Like that really happened (it didn’t).

I can hear veteran moms cackling everywhere. I’m usually pretty good at planning ahead (thanks to my own mom’s brainwashing when I was young), but yesterday went slightly awry… I was about 1 hour late all day and couldn’t catch up. I still felt jetlagged from my trip to NYC and a busy weekend (with Matt Damon), and the caffeine in my coffee was apparently on strike. My reality: Getting home with LadyP with my bags of tricks at 4pm (not showered, in my stretchpants and sneakers, dirty hair in a ponytail) and overdue to feed LadyP. My husband came home – 1 hour earlier than expected! – to grocery bags on the counter and me sitting on the floor in my socks spooning rice cereal into my squealy girl’s messy mouth. Hubby was happy to be home, but I was beat and ENERGETICALLY EMPTY. Just like those chocolates I’d eaten the day before. Valentine’s Day just took on a whole new meaning.

I thought fast: I skipped the shower, pawned LadyP and a glass of wine off to Papa and hit the kitchen with my newfound wind. (I actually love cooking, so this invigorated me a bit.) Italian appetizers on a plate, steaks on the grill, asparagus in the micro, a quick salad and leftover pasta. 30 minutes and done. (Yes, on that legendary wedding china… you have to eat off a plate anyways, so why not go for the fancy ones? It’s more fun and it really doesn’t take any more effort. If I wasn’t going to look cute, at least our dinner would be dressed up.) Dinner was followed by cupcakes, which was then followed by… putting everybody to bed for a good night’s sleep.  🙂

Although different from the Valentine’s Day I envisioned, it was a great night filled with love on so many different levels. I’m still exhausted and ‘energetically empty,’ but (from what I’m told) that’s going to be an ongoing theme in life from here on out. Afterall, an empty box of chocolates doesn’t appear to be very much fun, but we must remember: It’s empty for a reason. It’s empty because you had the delicious experience of tasting and enjoying all those little truffles one by one. An empty box of chocolates just means it’s now time to start a new box. You get me?