Easter: Bunny Mania (video)

April 8, 2007

This magical day of chocolate bunnies finally arrived.

Melissa and I like to inform Tiny of upcoming holidays and special events that may not arrive for weeks or even months. We'd started hyping up Easter Sunday - and the associated chocolate bunnies - three or four weeks ago. We're not sure if she remembers last year's bunny feast and how she had tore into the 2006 bunny - beginning with his long, chocolate ears; however, she advised us regularly as to what her strategy would be in 2007. Again, her carnage would start with the long ears. From there, her strategy seemed to change daily. At her last pre-Easter briefing, she claimed that after the bunny ears were consumed, she would then skip the head and torso but would flip the bunny over and resume with the bunny's feet.

Still in her Little Einstein pajamas, Melissa and I launched a crash course of the "Getting Warmer/Getting Colder" game as the moment of the Easter basket search was at hand. Not sure if she actually understood what we were trying to teach her, we let her start her hunt. She immediately headed down the stairs and continued down them even as Melissa and I chanted "You're getting colder. Getting colder..." Now convinced that she didn't really understand the rules of the game, we blurted out that the basket wasn't downstairs. She climbed back to the top step and headed toward the bonus room where the basket rested in her tv chair, turned to face the wall and awaiting her to investigate its unusual position. With some minor prompting, she stuck her head around the turned chair to gleefully find the basket of goodies.

"IT'S A CHOCOLATE BUNNY!," she exclaimed, followed by "IT'S ANOTHER CHOCOLATE BUNNY!" as she verbally inventoried her bounty. She plucked the brightly colored flower basket from the chair and plunked it on the floor to examine its treasures. Four chocolate bunnies, miniature chocolate bars, watercolor paints, play-dough, and a My Little Pony movie. Good stuff. And, yes, Tiny was allowed a solitary Reese's miniature egg. After all, it is a special day.

At church, with no children's Sunday school, Tiny sat with Melissa and me in "Big Church." The last time she sat in a "Big Church" service with us -- well over a year ago -- she had talked nonstop and finally had to be taken out to the lobby where she and I roamed the halls until the service ended. This year, Tiny seemed amazed with the choral arrangements but bored with the pastor's Easter message. When he was speaking, she amused herself by sketching puppies, kitties, and other animals in her drawing pad. And to our pleasure, when she did speak, she whispered! Overall, she did much better than we expected and earned a Lifesaver sucker for the trip home.

Lunch with Nana and Li'l Papa proved especially difficult for our three-year-old chocoholic. With new bunnies and assorted chocolates within eye-shot of every turn of her head (strewn about the floor, in the table decorations, on the Easter cake), Tiny's addiction could not be eased in our pleas for her to eat her dinner roll, her applesauce, a couple of bites of banana, some baked beans. Stubborn as she is, and since it was Easter, she was allowed to eat the biggest of the bunnies. Departing from her most recently stated bunny-feasting strategy, she nibbled on him "top down" style: starting at the ears and ending with the feet. Nothing splashy about the approach, but it satisfied her nonetheless.

Grandmommy and Papa joined us later in the afternoon. We all stepped outside for a quick Easter egg hunt on the front lawn in the surprisingly brisk April afternoon. Tiny made quick work of the hunt, and her little basket was soon heavily laden with treasure eggs that would spill from the basket whenever she'd abruptly change course as she darted from this spot to that. Afterwards and again inside, she marveled at each egg's chocolate treasure with a cute little - gasp! A Three Moosekateers bar!

With all the searches finished for the day, Tiny laughed, played, and danced her special dances to our renditions of "Coming Round the Mountain" and to Cotton-Eyed Joe from the CD player.