Easter Bunny 2.0

Easter. Spring. Tulips. Bunnies. Peeps. Little girls with golden curls prancing about in their green yard searching for eggs...

Or...

Flu. Snow. Code push requiring husband to work on the weekend. Last minute shopping trips at Target and near fist-fights over the last handful of Cadbury Cremes.

If you ever get the choice, I'd recommend the former.

But spring is quite cruel to us Minnesotans. I remember the first year I moved here, dressing up the best I could as a 6-month pregnant person. It was the hardest I had tried to look decent in a skirt and a pair of heels in...well, 6 months. Of course, the day Easter came, it was approximately 8 degrees outside. All the cute little girls dressed up for church were adorned in beautiful spring dresses. You just couldn't see them underneath their winter-mud-encrusted coats. That's when I learned what all Minnesota women know. You can be tough, or you can be cute. If you want us to be both, then don't expect us to be nice.

But now that my kids are finally old enough to enjoy Easter, I wanted to have a little fun with it. We made elaborate plans for food, friends, family and the instilling of traditions. These were all quickly jettisoned when Adam came home with the flu. The next day it snowed many inches.

These two factors confined me and the kids to a veritable quarantine. Jason still had to work at 6 am on Saturday. By the time afternoon rolled around and I was finally able to buy the egg dye kit, Adam was feeling well enough to get into the spirit of easter. We had fun dying them, but after that, things got tricky.

I explained to Adam that EB (Easter Bunny) would hide the eggs that we had dyed. He didn't appreciate this. See, years prior to this, we spent Easter with Jason's family. His mother isn't fond of leaving eggs out overnight, so we used plastic eggs. Myself? I think a healthy background level of bacteria keeps one from violent reactions to an incidental ingestion of large amounts of same bacteria....it's why I regularly eat things like hot dogs, pizza left out overnight, and sushi. A little egg left out overnight? No big deal. Not yet a nutritionist or biology major, Adam wouldn't, of course appreciate my line of reasoning. I had to work on him at another level. Our ensuing conversation left me exasperated.

Me: "What's the matter with leaving these eggs out overnight, buddy?"

Adam: "The EB brings his own eggs...on one paw, he carries treats and toys, on the other he carries the eggs with candy in them!"

Me: "But EB wrote a letter to me this year and told me that he has SO MANY toys and candy that he doesn't have any room in a bag for any eggs, so he thought we could use our own."

Adam: "Can you give him another bag?"

Me: "Not in time for tonight...he's already doing delivery...?" (running out of excuses at this point)

"How about we write him another letter and next year he can bring us his own eggs..."

Adam: "OK, tomorrow write him a letter and send him a bag for his eggs. Tomorrow we'll just find our own."

So the deal was struck. Next year: plastic eggs. I guess I don't mind giving into a 4-yr old's demands, so long as he has good reasoning and arguing capabilities. Kind of makes a momma proud.

Though, I did learn from another mom, that actually writing letters to EB is so passe. Apparently, he has an e-mail account now!