It’s Easter Sunday as I write this and one thing keeps coming to mind today: Easter egg hunts > the pumpkin patch.
… But only by a little bit.
Like most holidays, Easter is a quintessential Kid Day. Cute/frightening character dressed in a furry costume? Check. Wake up to gifts strewn about their room/the house? Check. Cards and books from grandparents? Check. Traditional outdoor activity that very likely looks better on Instagram than in real life (easter egg hunt, pumpkin patch, picking out a Christmas tree, lighting sparklers, blowing out birthday candles)? Check.
We just got home from a community Easter egg hunt/brunch, and yesterday we did a different community Easter egg hunt with the kids’ cousin. Linnea, at nine months old, is finally old enough to eat puffs with her hands and kind of crawl but she’s still too young to participate in kid activities. Miles, at two and a half, is old enough to participate in and kind of understand kid activities— but he’s too young to appreciate them and often it feels like he’s too young to fully enjoy them. For every one minute of enjoyment there’s about one minute of confusion and one minute of frustration.
Egg Hunt #1: Gone in 30 Seconds
For yesterday’s egg hunt, we were fortunate enough to wake up to a non-rainy April Seattle day. But it was also a 40-degree April day, so I gave up any hope of dressing my kids in cute pastel clothing and went to the egg hunt in winter jackets and hats. We arrived at the community center and saw that about 300 other small children and their parents had the same idea. It felt like the pumpkin patch on October 29th. At 10 o’clock on the dot, the person in charge said “GO!” and the kids sprinted out into the field.
Before I could squat down and explain to a bewildered Miles what exactly he was supposed to do, all the eggs were gone. Not that it would have mattered, because I forgot a basket like the stellar mother that I am so he wouldn’t have had anywhere to put the eggs. Because the hunt was for little kids, the eggs weren’t hidden so much as laid out in the grassy field in plain sight. Thankfully Miles’ aunt thought fast and collected some extra eggs from the organizer so Miles and his cousin could each ‘find’ a few eggs on the grass— and she also miraculously had an extra basket for Miles. Five minutes after we arrived at the egg hunt, it was over and we headed home. Any families running 30 seconds behind the official start time were out of luck.
Egg Hunt #2: No, I Won’t Share Eggs With My Sister
Today’s hunt lasted a few minutes longer. After we arrived at the country club and the Easter Bunny terrified Miles just by existing (“No Mommy I don’t want to say hi to the bunny! I don’t like the bunny!”), we headed out to the lawn. This time it was a slightly more seasonally appropriate sunny 55 degrees. But I still dressed both of them in nondescript winter-ish clothing because … well, because by the time I realized Easter is the “Super Bowl of dressing your kids,” there were 10 minutes left before leaving the house and I just couldn’t even.
The egg hunt was organized similarly to the one from the day before, with the eggs laid out on the lawn, but this time there were fewer children. So when the person in charge said ‘GO!’, there was a little less competition and some eggs stayed out there as long as three minutes. Because Miles was a seasoned veteran and I had learned from yesterday’s mistake and actually brought a basket (you can just call me Super Mom from now on), he knew what to do.
He shot out there and collected at least 7 eggs in his little blue basket. And honestly, it was worth it for those few minutes of joy. He was really proud of himself. That in itself was enough to put the Easter egg hunt ahead of our semi-disastrous pre-Halloween trip to the pumpkin patch on my kid-holiday-activity ranking list.
As we sat down to open the eggs and see what he got, I asked him: “Do you want to give an egg to your sister since she’s too little to fund them herself? She would love that purple egg.” He instantly shouted “NO!” and pulled his basket to his chest. Despite much prodding, he did not change his mind. Can’t win ‘em all.
Update from two days in the future: The perils of too much chocolate
Now it’s Tuesday, two days after Easter. I wrote the beginning of this post on Sunday evening, before I learned a Very Important Easter Lesson: Don’t let your kid eat unlimited chocolate.
I took Miles to the park for some Easter afternoon playtime, and all seemed well. He had a blast going down the slide and swinging and starting at another little boy’s bunny stuffed animal with envy.
But on the drive home, I heard some suspicious sounds from the backseat. At a stoplight, I turned around just in time to see Miles throw up all over his clothes. Before I could pull over, he did it again. It was *obviously” chocolate-related vomit. We hurried home, got him out of his clothes and into the bath, and spent the rest of the evening watching cartoons and sipping Gatorade.
Thankfully he wasn’t too terribly sick, but I did feel some guilt. Here’s a kid who’s barely tasted candy in his life, and I wasn’t very diligent about controlling his chocolate intake throughout the day. I figured, It’s a holiday, why not let him eat what he wants? Now I know exactly why.
Next year, I’ll enforce a strict “No eating five Hershey’s Kisses before breakfast” rule. I promise.