As a parent, there are very few moments where I think back to my own childhood and feel vindicated. There are, however, many thousands of moments I revisit and think "OH. I get it now."

As a child I don't remember ever sending out valentines to my classmates. This says to me that either that I lived without exchanging valentines in which case it is not necessary, or that I exchanged valentines and have no memory of it in which case they are not necessary.

Nevertheless, ever since the first year Nick was in school and he received 20 valentines from his classmates and gave out Zero, I have made it a point to get valentines out to classmates. And until this year, I did all the work. After all, you just buy them, scribble your kids name on them, and then give them to the teacher to pass out, right?

But this year, I am promoting skills such as handwriting and letter recognition. So this year, I am making Nick and Nate do the writing themselves.

It didn't seem so crazy at first. Nate has 16 kids to give cards to, and his teachers have asked that they not be addressed to a specific child, so that they may be distributed more easily. All he has to do is write his name 16 times. Nick has 13 kids to pass out valentines to. He not only needs to sign his name, but write his friends names on the envelopes. Still, it's only 14. Hardly like writing 100 Wedding Gift Thank Yous.

The trouble is, there is SO much to writing that we, as literate adults, take for granted. At school, both boys are learning how to form their letters. When Nick writes the letter R, for example, I can tell he is really thinking about the little bubble at the top and the diagonal line. He doesn't always end the bubble and start the diagonal at the same point, though. Which is fine, and I expected that.

It's just the other things. Little details such as writing the letters in a straight line instead of writing each letter a little bit higher than the last. Or almost running out of room and then just starting to write letters underneath the first few, but in a random order.

I expected some of these things from Nathan, but I didn't expect to have to hang over Nick's shoulder in case he should decide to write from right to left. To make matters worse, the pens the boys were using tended to smudge, but instead of letting the letters dry, they liked to run their fingers over the names to see the ink streak. I guess it was cool looking.

I know I startled Nick more than once, and each boy had done only 2 cards before they slumped. "I'm bored with this!" Nate said. And Nick added "This is KILLING me!"

I remember writing a Thank You note for my Kindergarten teacher. My mother helped me form each letter very carefully, but had to run to answer the phone. While she was gone, I amused myself by writing over each letter, trying to keep the pen on the lines I had made with my mom. When she came back, she freaked out, declared the card ruined, and we had to start again. I was SO TOTALLY confused. I mean, it looked the same to me, more or less. With a few more bumps.

But after yelling "Stop!" nineteen times as Nick was about to misspell a name or curved the wrong way with a J or a G... well...

Oh.

I get it.

.