Easter

This is a particularly long post, so I have offered a little outline.

I. Why say no to the Easter Bunny
II. The making of traditions
III. An odd moment with a bearish family
IV. Religion and Toddlers
V. A glimpse into the future
VI. A methodical mind

I. Why say no to the Easter Bunny

We don't do the Easter Bunny thing at our house. We also don't do Santa and have no plans to invite the Tooth Fairy over. I do, however, put together nice Easter baskets with Abby dolls (from Sesame Street, by the way) and figurines and jelly beans and hide Easter eggs in my backyard. I just don't claim that the Easter Bunny did it. A lot of people disagree with me on this one. In fact, I think most of my friends just got finished helping their kids to believe in the Easter Bunny (and really, folks, I think that's just fine, no judgment here). I also know that those who do the Easter Bunny often claim that the Easter Bunny is all about the magic of childhood. I get that, I really do. It's just that I happen to think childhood is pretty magical without me making up stories for Sydney. Children have awesome imaginations and will make up their own stories and myths if left to their own devises. In fact, some one from church told me one today. Do you know about the Noah doll? You shouldn't own one because no one likes a Noah doll. (Say the sentence over again aloud... no one likes a Noah doll.) I'm sure that child had a whole story he had to contrive to reason out why his teacher would tell him about the Noah doll. But the point is, he made up the story. The teacher just said something in passing.

Sydney may well believe in the Easter bunny and Santa and the Noah doll and goodness knows what else, but I want it to be her imagination at work, not me making up stories for her. I hid eggs in our yard for her. I did not come into the house and say, "Sydney, Mama and definitely not an imaginary bunny hid some eggs for you." I said, "Sydney, look, there's a surprise in the backyard." I don't know whether she even considered how the eggs got there, but if she wants to believe the Easter Bunny did it, I won't stop her. But I won't lie to her either.

II. The making of traditions

I started out a little intimidated by this holiday. Sydney is really starting to remember things and next year, she will actually remember how we do things. So, our family traditions are starting to form. Do I want to establish an indoor or outdoor egg hunt tradition? Do I want to establish an Easter breakfast tradition? The list goes on. I finally let myself off the hook and decided that traditions evolve and nothing we do this year is written in stone forever. But just for the record, this is what we did:

Egg hunt at the church two Saturdays before Easter
Friends over after the church egg hunt to play and make Easter coookies
Outdoor egg hunt at the house on the Saturday before Easter (because it was threatening to rain on Sunday)
Looked in the Easter basket first thing Sunday morning (I was actually saving it in the hall closet for after church, but Sydney asked for the basket within five minutes of getting up, so I gave it to her)
Out to eat for breakfast on Sunday
Church
Nap
Picnic and egg hunt with the Sunday School class

I have no idea which of the things on this list we'll do next year, much less in five or even ten years. I tried to do things in a way that I could redo them next year, but I also tried to leave things open enough that we could add to the list or change things as our family grows and changes. We'll see how that goes.

III. An odd moment with a bearish family

(This car was in the parking lot of Monument Cafe where we had breakfast, and that's all I know, folks. But I will let this serve to illustrate that there are plenty of opportunities for little minds to find magic in the world.)


IV. Religion and Toddlers

I was giving myself grief the other night. I feel very much responsible for Sydney's religious upbringing. Jeremy is supportive, but leaves the specifics to me and my discretion. With Christmas, I felt like we talked a lot more about the "Reason for the Season" than we did in the weeks coming up to Easter. I mean, I get that "baby Jesus was born" is a lot easier to talk about than "Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave," but I still thought I could have done better.

Then I thought about my Lenten prayer commitment with Sydney. Prior to Lent this year, I hadn't really established a nighttime prayer ritual with her, and every single night during Lent, we prayed. So last week, about a week before Easter Sunday, Sydney was able to do her evening prayer all by herself. I asked her if she would pray with me and she put her little hands together and said, "Dear God, thank you for mama, thank you for daddy, Amen." So that's one thing.

I also brought her to church every single Sunday during Lent (except for the one we were out of town, I guess). She now asks about church two or three times a week and looks forward to Sundays. So that's two things.

I tried to get her to say "He is Risen Indeed" but she said, "I can't." But I tried. So that's three things.

I also tried to tell her that the reason we gave her an Abby doll was because we knew she loved Abby and God loved us so much that he sent his Son, and we gave her sweet treats because the sweetest gift of all is that Jesus died for our sins. I don't know that she got it, or was even listening, but I count that as four things.

Four things I did over Lent to enrich my daughter's spiritual life. I still don't think I spent as much time thinking about her spiritual growth as I spent thinking about her emotional, or physical, or social growth, but a nice start, I think.

V. A glimpse into the future

These kids are the kids of some of my new Sunday School class friends. They are all about the same age and they all go to the nursery (or the slightly older ones go to Sunday School) together. I wonder how many of them will still be at the church when they are all in high school? I love that there's a chance that they all will be... that they might grow up together and remember sharing in all of these little moments. Now, if only I had a really good computer program that could instantly age all of the kids in the picture by fifteen years and we could really see what the future will look like....

VI. A methodical mind

Alternatively: Why Sydney only got six eggs

This year, Sydney remembered that Easter eggs have candy. So her plan of action for egg hunting was to find an egg, crack it open, try to eat the candy, and then, and only then, put the egg into her basket and look for another. A really fast four year old can gather up a lot of eggs in the amount of time it takes Sydney to open one piece of candy. Seriously, I don't think the blue egg or the green egg that you see in the picture made it into her basket. They were gone by the time she was ready to get her next egg.

But she did have a lot of fun.

Happy Easter!