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28 Valentine's Day jokes for kids
/With just a little more than two weeks before Valentine's Day, I'd say it's time to memorize some corny Valentine's Day jokes to share with the grandkids. Or the big kids. Or to chuckle over all on your own.
Let the giggling — and groaning — begin...
Grandma's nutty Valentine
/Bubby enjoyed his Valentine's Day party at school—and showing Gramma his monster valentine box.
The kid's a nut, I swear.
I do so love nuts, though, especially of the Bubby variety.
Today's question:
What's your favorite nut?
No filter necessary
/While I admit the truth hurts in many a case, unfiltered truths coming from the mouth of a three-and-a-half-year-old do no harm at all. Especially when the pint-sized truth-bearer is Bubby.
Bubby has a lot of toys. More toys than many a kid needs or could possibly ever play with. So when choosing a small gift to send my grandsons for Valentine's Day, I settled on some dinnerware from the Target dollar bin that sported robots on the plates, bowls, and eating utensils for Bubby. I packed them into a gift bag decorated with a robot, and added a box of chocolate/peanut butter candies and a lollipop decorated with a scene from The Adventures of Tin Tin.
I thought it was a pretty darn good gift, considering that Bubby and I—at his urging—did a lot of conversing in robot talk when we were last together, that chocolate and peanut butter are the only food groups he willingly consumes, and that he joyfully expressed his love for the Tin Tin movie when he and I saw it together.
I got a call Valentine's Day evening. Bubby's sweet little voice on the other end immediately announced, "Happy Valentimes Day, Gramma. Thank you for the package."
"Oh, you're welcome, sweetie!" I said. "How did you like it?"
"I really needed a toy," Bubby replied in a serious tone.
"Yeah, but you have lots of toys," I told him. "Now you can think of Gramma every time you eat on your robot dishes."
"Oh," he said, still quite serious. "I really needed a toy."
At that point, Megan took over the phone. "Ah, the truthfulness of a three-year-old," she said.
If it were anyone else responding to my gift in such a way, I might be offended. Not at all with Bubby, though. He probably really did feel like he needed a new toy and Gramma's lack of compliance clearly disappointed. Nothing wrong with him telling it like it is.
Bubby's response to the gift didn't surprise me a bit as he usually does tell it like it is. And sometimes his lack of a filter is just so darn sweet that he's forgiven for those times when it's not.
The purpose of my recent trip to the desert was for me to stay with my grandsons while Megan and Preston attended an out-of-state conference related to Preston's job. Late into the third day of babysitting duty, I sat in the rocker feeding Baby Mac when Bubby, who had been in the nearby playroom, sidled up to the side of the rocker, leaned his head on my arm and said in the most woebegone of voices, "I have a picture of Mommy and Daddy. I just wish it was real. I miss them double."
Oh, sweet sorrow unfiltered.
Bubby's expressions of love and joy are equally unfiltered. Later that same day, Bubby was tickling Baby Mac, causing them both to giggle up a storm. Bubby finished up the tickle session, nonchalantly walked away from his baby brother, and turned to tell me, "I love him bad. And he loves me bad."
When I later relayed both Bubbyisms to Megan, she responded with, "Awww...my little love bunny."
And a love bunny he certainly is. An unfiltered love bunny, that is, for better or worse.
I'm crossing my fingers Bubby remains unfiltered for many more years to come, for I wouldn't want my grandson any other way—even if it means hearing the truth about gifts from Gramma that weren't exactly what the little love bunny had hoped for. Or needed.
Today's question:
Which of your relationships would most benefit from a better filter—on statements made by you or to you?
Love manners and matters
/When I was a child, I rated my affection for something based on one question: Did I love it more than I loved my mom? To me, love was a hierarchy, and Mom was firmly and forever at the top.
Sure, I loved macaroni and cheese, I loved mashed potatoes, I loved listening to the Bay City Rollers and wearing my ever so stylish elephant pants. But did I love those things more than Mom? Not even close.
I soon started applying the same question to people. I loved my sixth-grade teacher, but not more than Mom. I loved my BFF, but not more than Mom. I even thought I loved a boy or two, but certainly not more than Mom. (Their failing the test, I now see, was truly a blessing for me.)
Then came Jim. I soon learned a very important lesson: My love test was silly, my love test was naive. Love isn't a matter of degree, I realized, it's a matter of manner, and I loved Jim in a far different manner than I loved my mom. Not more, not less, just different.
Yes, I loved my mom, but I sure didn't want to spend the rest of my life with her. I did, though, want to spend the rest of my life with Jim. Fortunately he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, too. So we married. And had kids.
When the first baby was born, there was the struggle of coming to terms with the fact—for Jim and for me—that the manner of baby love was such that it required more attention, more nurturing, more time than anything else in our world. It wasn't a matter of loving the baby more than Jim, though it took a while to convince him of that.
When the second baby was set to arrive, I had to convince myself that I wouldn't love my first more than the second. I had yet to learn how much the heart expands with each child. The lesson was confirmed when that second baby arrived. And again when the third baby arrived.
Again and again I've learned—and did my best to teach—that each and every one of those loves of my life were loved the very most I could possibly love, just all in a different manner. I've never loved one child more than another; they're loved in manners befitting them. Sure, there were—and continue to be—days when one drives me more batty than another, but that has nothing to do with love. I love them all fully, love them all completely. I just love my oldest daughter in a manner far different than the second, which is far different than the third. I like to think, and continue to hope, that the manner in which I love them is the manner in which they need, deserve, love in return.
If you're a mother, you get that.
When I learned I'd be a grandmother, though, I clearly didn't get it. Not fully. I wasn't sure I could love my grandchild as much as I loved my children. How, how, how could I, I wondered, when I loved my girls so fully and completely?
Again the matter of manners came into play. The manner in which I love my first grandson is so very different than the manner in which I love his mom...and his aunts. No one more, no one less, all of them different.
Which made it easier when my second grandson came along. I now fully and completely love him, too, yet in a manner so different from how I love his brother.
It's been more than thirty years since I first learned the lesson that love isn't a hierarchy or a matter of degrees, that it's a matter of manners. My love has grown to encompass so many in that time. I love my grandsons. I love my daughters. And I love my cats, my dogs, my house, my home. I do still love macaroni and cheese, too, and do still love potatoes. The Bay City Rollers? Well, not so much anymore.
Through all the additions, though, I still love my mom.
And I still truly and deeply love Jim.
And despite all that we've been through in our decades together, all the other manners—and the oft-heartbreaking matters—that have been thrown into the mix, I do still want to spend the rest of my life with him.
All of my manners of love matter, but today, that is the manner that matters the most.
Happy Valentines Day!
photo: stock.xchng
Today's question:
What love manners and matters are on your mind today?
Valentine's Day and other overhyped happenings
/Valentine's Day is Monday, which makes this the ultimate weekend of love. Or so we've been made to believe. I'm usually not cynical about much -- I prefer to find the magical in even the mundane -- but Valentine's Day is one of those happenings that has been overhyped and underperforming for years, so it's hard to get all mushy-gushy, misty-eyed and magical about it.
Jim and I have never really made a big deal out of Valentine's Day. Mostly because it seems so forced, so obligatory ... and so packed at restaurants on the big day. We mark it in small ways, nothing huge.
But my daughters want (and deserve) the magical. They want (and deserve) the mushy-gushy. Yet they've spent plenty of Valentine's Days down in the dumps because they're single. Or down in the dumps because they're NOT single and their truly beloved isn't being as lover-ly as he was expected to be.
Bottom line is that Valentine's Day never lives up to the hype. For me or for those I love. So I wish the hype would just go away, disappear from our collective conscience and let love and other things fall where they may.
I don't mean to take only poor Cupid to task, though, for Valentine's Day is far from the only overhyped happening in my experience. Here are a few more:
Lisa's list of things that fall short of their hype
1. Rocky Horror Picture Show ... oh, and Citizen Kane
2. High-school proms and homecomings
3. Turning 30
4. For that matter, turning 16, 18, and 21
5. New Year's Eve
6. Disneyworld
7. Calgon baths
8. Champagne
9. Godiva chocolates
I think the root of the disappointment isn't the happening in itself, it's the expectations surrounding it. So I'm learning to lower my expectations. Better yet, I'm working to have no expectations at all.
My only expectation now is this: That limited expectations just might lead to unexpected mushy-gushy, misty-eyed and magical moments all year long.
If not for myself, then at least for my daughters.
Today's question:
What have you found falls miserably short of its hype?