100 Days, 100 Ways

After you went to bed for the night on Thursday, I told you not to come downstairs for anything so I could prepare a surprise for you. For your surprise, I first wrote out a list of 100 things I love about you (taken from day 57; you haven’t read that list yet). Then, I cut out each item from the list and stuffed a different one in each of 100 balloons and a piece of chocolate in most of them. Then, I blew up the balloons, spread them around the room, put up some streamers, and hung your flowers for the week from the center of the room:

In the morning, I woke you up and handed you a note that said, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”* Then I told you to go look at your surprise. When you walked into the living room, you shrieked with delight. When I told you that each balloon had a love note in it, you said “awww!” and hugged me for a while.

Our oldest daughter came downstairs, but she was so tired that she walked right through the balloons, cleared a space on the couch, then lay down. After she was more alert, I told her that the balloons had chocolate in them. So, she started inspecting balloon after balloon to determine what kind of chocolate each had. Once, she picked up one of the balloons without chocolate and said, “Hey, this one only has a note in it. That’s not very interesting.”

Finally, I woke up our two year old and told her to go downstairs to see a big surprise. She crawled out of bed and said, “Okay, but first I’m going to do a summersault.” (There’s a girl with her priorities straight!) So, she did a summersault and went downstairs. When she saw the balloons, she did a double take, then ran into the room and started laughing and throwing them into the air.

For most of the morning, we all kicked balloons around, made balloon angels, and beamed with delight. It looked a bit like this. At one point, we even made a balloon pit out of our furniture and buried the girls in it. Since then, you’ve popped a few of the balloons to read their notes and each time you do, you give me a very nice hug.

By the way, I’ll still love you even if each of those 100 things that I love about you changes.

*Strictly speaking, I should’ve given you a note that said something like, “What do I love about thee? Let me count,” but that doesn’t have the ring to it that Browning’s line does.