Me: McRae, what would you like for breakfast? Cereal and a banana?
McRae: No.
Me: Yogurt and strawberries?
McRae: No.
Me: Well, what do you want? Blueberries?
McRae (in a kind, sincere and matter-of-fact voice): Um...no thank you, blueberries (pronounced: no dain-choo boo-be-wees). I'll have candies, though.
In our first year of attempting to celebrate Easter on our own with kids, we tried very hard to not make it all about the candy. Actually, we tried to make it hardly at all about the candy. Each night before bed, for the 8 days prior to Easter, we would talk about, read about, and look at pictures of what Jesus did that day all those years ago. We talked a little bit about the Easter bunny and mentioned that he would be hiding eggs in our yard for McRae to find. At first McRae didn't think the bunny should come into our yard and quickly said, "Bunny, get out!" (This was influenced by the fact that we had chased a rabbit out of our backyard twice that week. For the first time in six years of living here, a rabbit finally found it's way into our yard not once, but twice!) But when we mentioned he would also be bringing McRae and John some presents, he relented and said, "Oh! Okay!"
Painting eggs was a big hit. I need to invest in some aprons (or just make my own) so our kids aren't practically naked in all of our family Easter pictures. McRae refused to wear one of dad's t-shirts...so skins it was!
We learned that 8 eggs is about all that a toddler who is hunting by himself really has the attention span to find. The prizes in the basket were too appealing to continue hunting. Some of the items that the Easter bunny brought the boys this year included: swim attire, water guns, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, a toy flute, a glove and baseball, a book about animals, baby food, finger puppets, the movie "Beauty and the Beast", and very little candy.
2 comments:
You can divert his attention away from the candy all you want, but I think he'll still remember it! This was the first year we had an egg hunt with more than just Alana looking, so we were able to expand up to more than ten eggs, it was exciting. I'm sure he got the actual message of Easter, it's in there somewhere, he just doesn't want you to forget about the candy part!
I love all your non-candy ideas. I grew up with straight candy Easter baskets and that is pretty much what we do. We would have maybe one small gift. Terrible. I am inspired by you to try some other things. Thanks.
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