And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

I Hate Easter!

I've just discovered that I hate Easter. I don't recall having this antipathy before, but yesterday both implanted and cemented it. How do I hate Easter? Let me count the ways . . .

1) Holidays with kids begin so frickin' early!!! But at least with Christmas (in my family, anyway), it's stretched out for a few hours. Our Easter festivities started at 7 a.m. and were over by 8:05. After that, the fun began.

2) I feel compelled to buy candy at Easter, even more so than at Halloween. I'm not normally a huge candy buyer, but Easter has all these springtime-only candies: Peeps, Cadbury Creme Eggs, Cadbury Mini Eggs, Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs. Halloween doesn't do that! So I buy way too much candy to hoard the specialties, then restrict what candy the kids can eat (sorry, children have not suffered enough in their short lifetimes to deserve whole Cadbury Creme Eggs to themselves), then eat it all (with Dave's help -- ask him how many Reese's Eggs he's eaten in the last two days).

3) Why do we have more than one holiday that focuses on gorging oneself with candy anyway? In our house, we have a rule (for the kids) of two pieces of candy a day. Now, these aren't Snickers bars -- they're usually a single Jolly Rancher or chocolate coin, or maybe a small box of Nerds. The kids are fine with that. But for the holiday, I let up on the rule. Sure, they could have more than two pieces of candy for one day -- what would be the harm in that? Well. Let me tell you. Three-year-olds have no concept of what others would consider reasonable candy consumption. Ian? Started eating candy at 7:15 and wallowed in his Easter basket pretty much nonstop until 11, when we finally cut him off. He then spent the remainder of the day alternating between running around the house in circles and throwing monstrous, screaming temper tantrums. Yeah. That was a good plan. I thought the sugar-hyperactivity connection was apocryphal, but after yesterday, I'm not so sure.

4) Katie, the 7-year-old, has been told the "truth" about the Easter Bunny, as well as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I felt like I had to do it because she kept challenging me in front of her brother, and I wanted her to cut it out so she didn't plant suspicion in him. Thing is, I had visions of her being in on the secret and feeling all adult about it, helping to maintain the illusion. I think I remember feeling that way when I was a kid. Instead, she just finds every opportunity to announce that she knows that really I hid the eggs, that I bought the toys, etc. I finally had to yell at her about it -- and threaten to take away her candy. It just about ruined Easter for me.

5) and 6) I hate dressing up. Apparently, so does Ian, as evidence by the fact that the biggest tantrum was about wearing his new Easter outfit (sweater vest, polo, short pants). And yet I felt compelled to dress for the Easter service, even though UUs apparently don't really celebrate Easter. Instead, we had a Flower Communion -- a nice idea -- and shared memories of Easter and Passover. Odd. How am I supposed to teach the kids that there's more to Easter than bunnies and candy when the church we're attending doesn't even acknowledge it from an objective, distant standpoint? Oh, well. I'll dig out the Bible and talk to Katie about it sometime this week. Hope I can find a regular Bible, and not Dave's hippy-dippy Good News Bible.

7) Easter egg hunts and competitive children do not mix. I had a sobbing Katie on my hands at the community egg hunt at the park when she spent all her time looking for the special sparkly eggs, thinking there was plenty of time to pick up the other eggs, and then ended up with only one egg. Her brother got 19. Not that it mattered -- they both had to turn their eggs in to exchange them for free bags of -- what else? -- candy, but it was a life lesson that we had to get through first. Ugh.

So that was our Easter. And now it's Spring Break. Already the kids were screaming at each other as I got out of the shower (one of my least favorite sounds in the world, especially as I step out of the shower). Fortunately, Ian's in daycare today. Katie went to play with a friend. Maybe I should get some work done in this time that I get a break from entertaining the children.

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 9:49 AM