It's hard to believe that this is actually her second Easter. We didn't really celebrate her first Easter. We got her naked and put on Bunny ears. That was it. This year was our first year to begin the Easter traditions. I wanted our new family traditions to be a mix of both mine and E's childhood traditions.
When I asked E about his Easter traditions, they ended up being very different from my childhood Easter traditions. His included getting dressed up, going to church and going to Woodlawn Cemetery to stand next to the new flowers that people would place on the tombstones. His Aunt Peggy would also give them a chocolate bunny, which one year his dog Rex ate causing some problems.
The traditions that I remember from my childhood involved Easter egg hunts at my Grandma's with all my cousins and Easter baskets that were hid in the house. Our Easter basket contains lots of candy, but it also includes books & puzzles and ALWAYS a new kite. My brother and I would get so excited for our Easter kites. (Total sidebar: E has never flew a kite. I bought kites when we lived in Jersey and we tried to fly them up in his summer cabin in upstate New York once, very unsuccessfully. It makes sense that he has never flew a kite. Buildings tend to be big barriers to wind and effective kite flying.) Finn didn't get a kite in her basket -- at least this year.
Finn woke up to two Easter baskets; one from the Easter Bunny and one from her grammy in Iowa. The one that Grammy sent included Peeps (which are a favorite of mine). Finorah had her first Peep on Easter morning. It was quite the hit! She had yellow sugar all over her face before that Peep was gone and it was gone pretty quickly. And then she started pointing to the box for another!
We also had an Easter Egg hunt for her in the front yard. I wasn't sure how excited she would be for it. Saturday, we practiced by giving her an egg with Gold Fish in it. She would open the egg and see the Gold Fish and gobble them up. Then, I'd fill it again and close up the egg. I was hoping that when she would see the colored eggs on the lawn that she would think of Gold Fish and hurry to get them. I'm not sure if it was my Pavlovian egg experiment or the fact that an egg looks just like a ball (we have ball-obsessed dogs, hence the ball-obsessed daughter) -- either way, our Easter egg hunt was a success!
I only laid out about 10 eggs. I "hid" two eggs under larger pieces of bark laying in our yard, thinking that might hinder her "seeking" abilities. No way! My girl was an excellent egg-picker-upper. E drove her out to our front yard in her wagon. Since she doesn't walk yet, I was thinking that E would have to hold her hand and walk her around for the eggs. When she found her first egg, she immediately sat down on her butt and tried to open it and eat what was inside. Then she gingerly started crawling to another egg. She initially didn't like the feel of the cold, damp ground under her hand. But that was forgotten as she started to see the other eggs scattered around the yard. She picked up every single egg by herself.
Then, E decided that Easter was also going to be her first dirt-bike ride. He has a little Honda 50 that he rode around when he was a wee one. I was surprised at how quiet it was -- I didn't remember it being that quiet, but then I didn't think anything about noise scaring me or any of its adult riders. He pulled up right next to her and she just looked at it. Wasn't afraid. I picked her up and put her on E's lap and they drove around the yard for about 5 minutes. She put on her usual Finorah Face. She didn't smile or laugh, but she also didn't cry or make any attempts to get off. She brings out her Finorah Face a lot in public, when meeting new people and being put in an unfamiliar circumstance that she is trying to figure out if she likes or not. She didn't NOT like the dirt-bike. So I think that was also a success!
After the dirt-bike ride, we put her in her red wagon and put on her Easter bunny ears. We walked down the block and back. She clutched her basket full of eggs real tight and actually allowed the ears to sit on her head the whole time (shocker!). She had a fabulous Easter morning! After the morning festivities, the poor girl was tuckered out and fell asleep quite quickly, napping away most of the rest of the day.
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