Choo Choo's first Easter

Maybe I should actually have titled this: “Monkey’s last Easter where she gets all the eggs for herself”, but that just seems a little long. But it’s true, Monkey — next year, even if Choo Choo isn’t walking easily on her own, you’re going to have to share with her, even if just a little. That’s going to be a big note over the coming years — sharing. You’ve had everything to yourself for a long time, and you don’t exactly like giving things up.

(That’s okay, though. It’s not easy to do. Nana’s got a couple of pictures of me doing the “No, it’s MINE!” thing, too.)

So maybe as a last hurrah, or as a first foray into planning bigger and better things, Mommy organised (and mostly handled) the Easter egg hunt this year. Last year, we stayed in Santa Ana as Mommy wasn’t feeling well, and Holy Week in Costa Rica doesn’t involve rabbits hiding chocolate eggs. I think we wanted to make up for that.

Mommy coloured a dozen eggs, and then put some Tinkerbell stickers on them. Last night, after you went to bed, Mommy and I hid them around the yard, along with a few eggs with M&Ms in them. After we gorged ourselves on pancakes this morning, we (the “we” in this case was Grandpa, Granny, Mommy, Choo Choo, you, and myself) went outside to find them all.

We had to show you the first few eggs. You seemed to be a little perplexed — what the heck are coloured eggs with Tinkerbell stickers doing in my sandbox? But after the sixth or seventh egg, you seemed to catch on and started to see them a little more readily. We still had to guide you towards the eggs (mostly because it was still freaking cold out), but you found them all.

Easter eggs, Westgate, Calgary, Alberta, 4 April 2010

And then you started eating them. First, of course, the M&Ms inside the plastic eggs. You chased those with a yolk from one of the coloured (hard-boiled) eggs. Little did we know at the time that you seem to have the same reaction to chocolate that I did when I was younger.

You, my dear, are hyper.

(Choo Choo, you’re pretty dull right now. Actually, you spent probably 80% of today sleeping on Granny. And we can’t really feed you anything “interesting” for a few months.)

At church, you received a little gift bag that had some chocolate in it. Never mind the fact that you love to run up and down the aisles, you were now hopped up on cacao and tearing around the place in fast forward. You wore me down faster than I could have imagined, and sweating up a storm to keep up with you. Naturally, everyone else was utterly amused at the little girl in the red dress who couldn’t seem to stop giggling.

Too bad they couldn’t have seen you when the sugar ran out. You went down, and getting you up again when your nap was over was just shy of impossible. It took a while for you to wake up entirely.

I almost can’t wait until next year. Choo Choo, with luck you’ll be walking, and while you might be taking unsteady steps, we might be able to convince Monkey to help you find an egg or two. And as you both get older, I’m going to have even more fun hiding them in difficult places, with puzzles to boot.

But for now, I got to witness my first egg hunt. And I know it won’t be my last.