Our Own Little Easter

Emerald had a stomach bug yesterday and was unable to go to daycare and do an Easter egg hunt with her friends. Poor thing was heartbroken--she wanted me to dress her and she kept telling me she felt better as she was getting sick. So, I sent the eggs I had all ready stuffed for her class to school and had them send home a filled basket, and we had our own little Easter today!

I was actually really proud of Emerald, because she slept through the night in her own room, in her own bed. She has been sleeping on a pallet next to my bed because if she wakes up, she likes having the validation of us being there to comfort her. But as I wrote a few posts ago, I cleaned up her room so that it is tranquil, set up some comforting night-lights like the moon and the star projector, and put on her very brand new pink bed sheets, which she was very excited about.

Both kids woke up in a fantastic mood, well-rested and ready for the day. I, on the other hand, seem to have gotten my cold back, so my very dearest wish in the world was to crawl back into bed and sleep all day. But since Michael had work and the kids are not QUITE old enough to watch themselves, I dragged my sorry keister out of bed, and decided the best course of action was to put the kids to work to take the pressure off of me.

I know--mom of the year, right?

Anyways, Emerald enjoys helping me make breakfast, so I had her put an equal amount of grapes and tangerine sections on her plate and on Gabriel's plate. She also helped me make a toaster scramble with sausage, egg, and cheese for each of the kids, and ladle a little salsa on to their plates.

Gabriel is not so great with the food helping yet, so he handed me clean dishes from the dishwasher to put away, and I let him wipe down the appliances with a washcloth. He always really enjoys helping out.

During breakfast, I got very ill and had trouble moving the day forward, but eventually I knew I had to, so I turned on some peppy music for us to clean to and set the kids to picking up toys.

Gabriel usually takes a little prompting to get him going--watching Emerald seems to help, and after you hand him a few toys and make him drop them in the basket, he gets the idea and starts searching out toys to pick up himself. Of course, both of them have problems because they are so young. Gabriel will find a toy that is entertaining and forget what he is doing; Emerald started crying and reassuring her doll, Cooper, that if he was good, he could come out of "time-out" later. I can only assume she was referring to being put in the basket with the rest of the toys.

While we were cleaning, the song "Two-Step" by Dave Matthews Band came on. Gabriel really got into it and started dancing his one shoe shuffle and jumping up and down. Emerald caught onto the excitement, so for a while, we all just swung around the living room and shook our booties to the music. When the Britney Spears song came on, Gabriel got awkward and didn't want to dance any more, so we went back to cleaning, lol.

After we were done cleaning, I sent the kids to play in the bedroom while I hid Easter eggs in the living room so that we could have a little hunt in here. I used the eggs they had gotten from school, as well as some candy I had purchased and a few whole tangerines that were colorful and fun.

Because he did this yesterday with the same basket, Gabriel got right into it and ran out there wanting to find candy. Emerald took a little longer warming up to the idea, but eventually she was running amok as well.

Surprisingly, they actually found pretty close to the same number of things--Gabriel found 9 and Emerald found 12, but they ended up splitting it evenly after mama helped herself to some lemon heads she found in one of the school eggs.

After that, we moved into games to distract them from the candy that I was not yet ready to let them have. One of them got a little bottle of bubbles, so I blew bubbles for them for the longest time. The kids had a blast--the cats actually came out and chased bubbles with the kids and we tried to see who could "catch" the most bubbles. It was also good because Gabriel would sign more and please to get more bubbles, which is good--he is coming along great with his signs.

Then came the egg games--we threw eggs to see who could throw them the furthest; we had rolling egg races; and we played color sorting games. Gabriel particularly enjoyed being the one that ran and brought the thrown/rolled eggs back. Finally, we pretended we were eggs (I say we, when really it was just the kids and I was the judge, of sorts) by flipping and rolling and generally acting like the plastic eggs had moments before, sans the being tossed.

After the egg games, Emerald wanted to put on an Easter puppet show for us, which gave us all a chance to slow down a bit--using her stuffed white rabbit named Pawpaw, Cinderella ballerina barbie, and two small stuffed animals, Emerald reenacted "Little Bunny Foo-Foo" for me and Gabriel. I played the part of the good fairy, and Gabriel squealed with laughter every time Emerald used Pawpaw rabbit to pummel the "field mice".

I finally cracked and let the kids split a little bag of M&M's before we went outside to have story time and get some fresh air. They got to swing while I read "Anderson's Fairy Tales" aloud to them and to Benjamin, who I think rather enjoys listening to story time. He is able to hear my voice now, which means that Emerald and I sing and read stories to him.

By that time, it was time for Michael to come home and have lunch, so Easter day was over!! This afternoon, we will try and have more fun, but who knows what we will do. I am off to catch a nap with my wee ones!!

~Andie~