Easter Parade and Party

The school Easter party feels a little like Groundhog Day. Each year, A is so excited about the hunt, she slowly looks around, tries to find mom and dad, watches her friends gather eggs, carefully inspects each egg that she finds, and then individually opens it to investigate. And each year, she looks around in horror as she realizes that while she was experiencing this process, all the eggs are gone and she only collected four. You can even hear Chad asking me about this very thing, right as it plays out in front of us. I thought she might be okay this year, given that she just seemed to be enjoying herself. Nope. Cue the annual water works.

This was hard for us to handle because on the one hand, we want to teach gratitude for what you have. On the other hand, we want to teach her to be responsible for her behavior. And while neither Chad nor I are particularly competitive, we both do have to hold our tongues to prevent us from having to make her go faster. I'm glad she likes to stop and appreciate things. I just wish the outcome was that she realized that part/most of the fun is the hunt, not the number of eggs you come home with. We tried talking about this but she was unconvinced. She said that friends were supposed to share (and "Mighty Oaks share!") so we had to discuss that we can't just make other people give us their things.

Dude, this parenting gig is hard. She keeps us on our toes. I want to balance being understanding but having boundaries.

So of course we had an Easter egg hunt at home, using some leftover eggs and the extra eggs that Ms. Bobbie snuck to A when she saw how upset she was. This was clearly brilliant. She beamed at the full basket of found eggs (which again, were not quickly retrieved by any stretch of the imagination), which made her completely forget about her earlier upset.

We also dyed some eggs tonight, which was a lot of fun. She tried her first hard boiled egg which was about as funny as I hoped it would be--she was completely disgusted by it.