Eggs to Celebrate Spring

Last night we dyed eggs in anticipation of a visit from the Easter Bunny on Saturday.  No, it’s not Easter, and we were planning on celebrating on the Equinox (we generally celebrate the seasons around here rather than religious holidays,) but things were too chaotic last week.  So instead we’ll celebrate the arrival of Spring this weekend.  And I suppose we could call him the Equinox Bunny since we are celebrating that, but you know, that just sounds odd to me, so I’m going with Easter Bunny for now.

I find that the trick with doing something like this with toddlers is to make it really simple and pretty short.  When I asked James what colors he wanted the eggs to be he said red.  So we just stuck with that one color. (Done with food coloring and they were supposed to stay in the dye for much longer, but that was not what the boys wanted, so they’re pinkish brown.)  I sometimes have to fight the urge to comlicate and over-do on things like this.  That part of me felt like, ‘but we HAVE to do more than one color!’  The truth is, one color was fine.  It was more than fine.  The boys, who colored wih crayons on their eggs before dyeing them,  got to see their design appear as the rest of the egg changed color like magic in the dye bath.  We only dyed 8 eggs- once again I thought we needed more, but that was actually great to quit while they were still happy and engaged intead of forcing a longer session that may have ended in whining.  It was fun and felt right.  I am constantly amazed how these little celebrations don’t have to be complex to be fulfilling.  The simplicity (and thus the lack of stress) really made last night work.

Now to wait for Eqinox Spring Egg Hiding oh heck, the Easter Bunny on Saturday!