gotta just laugh at it - I guess if you have the time and energy.....but it does seem over the top.  Who are they trying to impress? The kids - they can't be aware. The other parents? The teachers? OTOH, I guess they'd argue that it's festive.

I asked Seth (8yo) if he wanted to bring valentines in for his class and he said "nah, not really" - so that was that!  I found Nerds candy Valentines for my DD16 - she goes to a gifted HS - they call themselves the "nerd school", so I thought the air of sarcasm was just the right tone LOL - my DD hates Valentine's Day!

So sorry to hear about your nausea - I had that in my second pregnancy - crackers and some deli meat were all that appealed to me for a long time - I lived on oyster crackers for a few weeks.  Fortunately, it went away after a while.  Hope yours gets better soon!

Some people have too much time on their hands! Guess we can swim together in the slacker end of the pool, Tessa, because I'm not going in for that. Of course, in Australia, there's less competition for these things; no valentine's exchanges at Jess's daycare yesterday. I did make Valentines with Jess on Tuesday for each other, but that was just fun. Even at 2 1/2 there's heaps of fun to be had with glitter glue sticks, stickers, printed out photos and scissors!

So sorry about the food aversions. I don't have any advice, but just hugs and hugs and hugs. What doesn't make you nauseous? If you have to live on plain pasta or whatev, just do it. The human species is remarkably adaptive. You'll make it!

by the boxful. That's what I remember. Along with ginger tea (shudder!). I definitely feel your pain - it actually still has the power to make me feel sick three years later.

I was glad to see your post, as I had the exact same thought going through my 2-year-old's Valentine bag from school. He is just old enough to get the whole concept (having a big brother helps) so I had him "make" Valentines by taking dinosaur stickers and putting them all over some cutout posterboard hearts that I bought (pre-cut!) at an local toystore. Made him very happy and was zero effort on my part unless you count going to the store, which I had to do anyway for a birthday gift, and scribbling his name on the back of each.

One mother put together a whole bag of candy for each child (thanks for nothing!). Another baked gingerbread (an obvious reaction to all the candy). Yet another made these very fancy cards using lots of that sticky foam stuff, another

I have to say that my first thought is, really, if everyone just applied themselves to all our social and environmental problems like they do these kinds of projects, we would live in a much better world where we would all have time to create elaborate foam Valentines.

OK, I'm sorry if if makes you feel sick, but I hear the siren call of all that Valentine's candy...

Maya is 3.

They were Spongebob, with a little gummy candy. Store-bought, not homemade. The reason we went to the trouble is because the class had a V-Day party, so we knew there would be an optional exchange of cards.

It was actually fun to sit down with her and have her list off all her classmates: "To Evan, From Maya!" and so on.

She came home with a little bag full of them, and excitedly showed me which Valentine came from who. Of course she has no clue about the whole Hallmark meaning of it all, but she has been going around chirping "Happy Valentine's Day!"

I can't comment on the daycare valentines -- I don't have my kids in daycare.

I had terrible nausea with both my kids. Gatorade (lemon or orange flavors) and lime popsicles helped a lot. Sip Gatorade while you think about food or eat. It will help. (Both Gatorade & lime popsicles were recommended by my ob-gyn.)

It's not a competition.  It really isn't.   Just do what you can and let other mothers who have more energy or time or who have a passion for that kind of thing do what they can.  

I know women who love making cards - they love that stuff...or baking...or cleaning...it's totally cool if they want to make cards for the preschool.  Really.  I work very hard at not feeling that I have to keep up with them.  

That said, the preschool is doing its Valentine's Day thingy today.  But they asked for cards and sent home a list of names.  I wrote the "to" part and made my son write his name in the "from" part.  To be fair, his name only has three letters.  

As far as the nausea goes I don't have any advice - only sympathy and "this too shall pass" which seems kind of lame actually.  Hang in there.

and she received valentine's from two of her classmates...who are even younger than she is!   let the wackos waste their money.  it's crazy.

First, V-Day: There's always at least one mother who prepares treat bags when everyone else gets by with cards and/or suckers. My friend is one of them-- she isn't competitive, she just really gets into these corny holidays. Depending on the age of the kids, passing out and receiving valentine's cards is a HUGE and EXCITING deal (it took over an hour at my son's preschool yesterday). But kids don't notice or care who does what (unless you do nothing, in which case you may hear about it). That's my experience.

Then , nausea: I am so so so so so very glad the nausea-throwing up stage is behind me. Food was really an ordeal. Thinking about what I wanted to eat and what would be tolerated took a ridiculous amount of effort. Forunately, we have a great cafeteria here that serves everything imaginable (even sushi!) so I didn't have to decide in the morning what I would eat for the rest of the day. A lot of days I skipped lunch in favor of small random food items like crackers and cheese squares. Dinner was another matter. I cooked for DS and DH and rarely ate what I made. Or I'd eat stuff that--no lie-- I knew wouldn't taste so bad coming up twenty minutes later. Ice cream and nacho dip worked surprisingly well for this.

I have no advice, except to remind you that it does pass. I was off Zofran and eating normally by week 17.

That's hilarious about the Valentines.  I think it's with good intentions, moms just like doing stuff, and who knows, maybe their kids have fun scribbling on them or something.  

Our daycare had a "No goody bag" policy because some mom or dad put COINS into one of them and a kid choked on the way home in the car.  Can you imagine?  They also had a no food from home policy for any birthday and a strict birthday policy (card from teacher, acknowledgement, a special snack provided by school not parent, instead of the usual).  Also, because of aforementioned coin incident.

I think that we just go overboard on all holidays.  Holidays should be celebrated at home with families once.

Sorry about the nausea, I don't have any suggestions.  Just eat what you can eat, even if it's the same thing all the time.  That's what I did.  I never ate so much Kraft mac and cheese.

I know everyone is different; saltines did not one thing for me when I had morning, afternoon and evening sickness, but I could always keep down chocolate milk [the kind that you buy as chocolate milk, I did not make it myself but it might not matter]. I drank a quart of that every day for about four months and it always stayed down whether other things wouldn't.

So, who knows, it might work for you.

But he picked out spiderman cards and then told me which one would go to each child, then I wrote the names on them.  When DH brought him home from school, they had a bag full of candy and cards.  We gave store bought cards that included tattoos.  I thought nothing of it, some people like to do goody bags.  But I enjoyed hearing DH go on and on about how we didn't do as much as others.  I showed him that it was about 1/2-- some kids gave cards, some gave more.  But since it's usually the mom who feels the guilt- I was happy that he got to feel it for once! But believe me, he had no idea what we sent prior to his asking last night.

However, I am still having VIOLENT food aversions.

years ago pizzaria uno had a pizza i loved- i would have eaten it every day i loved it so much- it had fresh greens on top and very thinly sliced red potatoes.

but when i was pregnant w/ my son (wow- 15 years ago) we went to uno's and i couln't eat it.  so we wrapped it and took it home and put it in the fridge and then i couldn't even open the fridge because it was in there- i couldn't even bear the smell of it.

i used to be nauseous off and on all day, but the worst was the evening- i could usually get through the day w/ out getting too sick, but i'd throw up afternoon through dinnertime-  i used to dread driving home from work.  it was awful.

my last two pregnancies weren't bad at all in comparison.

i have absolutely no advice- i just feel your pain and wish i could give you a hug.  but you're probably so queasy you wouldn't want any to give you even the slightest squeeze.  hang in there.

about valentines- my favorites are the friendly's ice cream 5/$1 coupons- each valentine is good for a free kid's cone, and all of the $ goes to easter seals.  they do it every year

i drive a school bus (actually it's a van) and it's perfect for me- we're not allowed to give out candy- but most drivers do anyway.  but i can follow the rules and still give out a treat.  i also give them to the kids i take care of at church, and my kids give them out too.

i buy a ton each year, and i don't worry if i buy too many, because all of the $ goes to easter seals.

As in, you have no option. As in, make sure they're alphabetical and sealed with a rubber band. As in, if you don't your child will be the only one left out and she will cry. This is the 2-yr-old class.

As a type-A creative, this one made me want to tell them to SUCK IT and I bought a dollar carton of wal-mart cards with puppies and kittens on them, scrawled the names on there, let Sparrow stick the stickers all over them and crammed them, alphabetically, into an an evelope. But those suckas do not get a rubber band, do you hear me? No Rubber Band!

Ask me nicely and you may get personally embroidered heart-shape doilies with homemade chocolate. Demand it and I turn on you.

The kids all thought it was Halloween.

for a few months i used to have baked potatoes w/ sour cream and almost nothing else

i'm sure i ate other things, but that was lunch and dinner for the most part- baked potatoes and sour cream

my son turned out fine- he's big and healthy and strong.  

don't panic if you can't eat a variety of foods- it will be ok

And I like doing homemade ones, because it's a great excuse to get out the paint and paint something that won't be staying in the house. It's a good craft that we can do together, and I hate buying something that we can make. I figure the valentines are mostly meaningless to the recipient, so at the least we can make them meaningful and valuable to the sender.

I have a bunch of those foam stamps, and what we did was fold a piece of paper in half, and then paint the stamps with watercolors, and stamp the 'cards'. The end result looks pretty good, doesn't take long, and it's fun for mom and dad and kid. DD then added some paint accents. The cards were all different; some had hearts, some had ponies, some had bugs, and some had octopi. Some had a mix of the above.

Then she wrote the names inside. (The teacher had sent home a list of all the kids in the class so we could be sure to get them all.)

Here is a picture of some of the cards DD and DH made (while I was off at ceramics class):

Some of the other kids did homemade cards and some did store bought. I didn't see the whole haul but there was a LOT of candy. They had cupcakes in their party and by the time I realized just how much there was she had at least 10 empty wrappers. Chocolates, suckers, the candy hearts, a milky way, m&ms... we may have been the only family who didn't send candy. I'm not sure whether to be embarrassed that it didn't even occur to me or confident that the last thing those kids needed was more candy. I had to confiscate DDs, and worse, when she opened a chocolate heart after we agreed that she was done eating the candy, I had to eat it myself. Oh, the sacrifices of momhood.

we do homemade Valentines.  I like to bake.  So I make a bunch of monster sized choc chip cookies.  We put them in cd-sleeves that the kids stamp hearts on.  It keeps us all busy for a Saturday afternoon.  And I get to bake and not have the product stay in the house.

It's truly unimaginable unless you've gone through it.  I am so, so sorry for you.  I did the Zofran, and a couple of stays in the hospital with DS.  (Surprisingly and to my great relief, I have not had it this pregnancy).  Nothing helped really.  This time, I ate small frequent meals and that was good, but last time, it wouldn't have made a difference at all.  I couldn't even stand the smell of water.  Which is really annoying when one is bent over the toilet most of the day!

Hang in there, and hopefully it will pass (I was better by month 6).  And screw those people that say things to you like "It's really just mind over matter." And "Oh, golly! I know JUST how you feel.  With my baby, I was SO nauseous for the first 3 months!  I mean, I never actually threw up or anything, but I FELT sick."  (both things I actually heard while suffering the hyper emesis)  It's almost funny how stupid people can be.  Almost.

I hope you're better soon, momma!

I had a flashback yesterday to my own childhood... Actually it started with Wednesday. I'm at school from 9 to 8pm on Wednesdays and as I am racing my two daughters to day care I remembered (bonus points for me) that the Valentine's day party was that day. So we ducked into Long's Drugs picked up some Disney princess Valentine's cards and filled them out in the car. DD just turned 3 and last year at day care she came home with a whole stack of cards but I hadn't brought any, which was fine. The funny thing was that this year she only came home with two from the other kids... and she didn't really care anyway.

On the actual day, though, DD had preschool (she goes two days a week) and we were prepped in advance that you may bring cards if you want just make sure to bring for everyone if you do. I had the foresight to get two boxes of Disney princesses so I was doing pretty well. I even made DD "sign" her name... she scribbled over the place where I had written her name. So, the morning starts off with the card exchange and all the moms are delivering the cards into the bags, trying to encourage their kids to join in the process. And our experience sounds similar to others... some brought the cheapy cards like us while others had candies attached and still others went overboard with a whole bag of whatnot.

What made me laugh, though, was when I picked up DD and she was sorting through the bag in the back of the car. She noticed that some cards had candies and started digging for the candies... disregarding all the other cards. This brought me right back to when I was a kid (my memory is probably not of preschool, but not too far off). I remember my mom racing into the store the second before class to make sure I had all the cards (or whatnot) that all the other kids had and, sure enough, when all was said and done, all I wanted were the cards with the candies and screw the rest. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

And I probably will wait until the last minute and not have enough time for the candies next year either!

Ladies, I cannot tell you how many of these comments made me laugh right out loud.  Thank you for the pick me up!