Bunnies in the oven

I often idly think about writing a parenting book based soley on warnings. Eg- to all young, enthusiastic, naive parents – do not start family traditions, especially those tied up with mythical holiday figures, that you are not prepared to continue with for years and years, long past the point of novelty wearing off. Do NOT, I repeat do NOT come up with cute, creative and complicated easter egg hunts if you don’t want to be forced to continue to be cute, creative and complicated forever or risk ruining the myth for those fresh-faced innocents. It’s a hard thing to justify trying to convince kids that the Easter Bunny was just really tired this year or couldn’t be bothered LOL There are so many wellmeaning, misguided rods in/on ?? this back of mine, that it's really a wonder I can even sit down anymore. The girls do a great chorus of “but it’s a family TRAD-I-SHUN, Mum” LOL

Anyway, I was gonna bail this year, I really was, the kids could just get a pile of chocolate on the table and then all my slack intentions were railroaded by childish excitement and memories – I swear children can smell potential maternal slothfulness and rev their manipulative joy up a gear quickly to get me guilt-stricken and beholden again. We spent Easter at my parents’ house in Ocean Grove, it’s been some time since we were there at Easter and Amy was raving about the wonderful Easter Bunny treasure hunt they had there “remember, he left us a real letter and we all had bags and all the eggs had Hi-5 stickers on them and I had Tim and Sophie had Nathan and Kate had Charlie and we had to search all over the house and it was the bestest Easter ever! I hope we can do that again”. Dammit! And she would have been only about 4 at the time and I can’t believe she can remember the whole thing so vividly. So the Easter Bunny was up at midnight with a couple of drinks under her belt (Mr Bunny fast asleep and snoring like a steam train), whacking eggs and plush toys in all sorts of really quite amusing places. Fortunately the kids are macabre enough to love the sight of plush rabbits hidden in the oven in a baking tray and it gave EB a few giggles at midnight too LOL Hey, whatever gets you through the hunt… ;)

And can’t pass up the opportunity to have a rant about Easter excess while I’m here. Back when I was a kid (start rolling your eyes here, I’m used to it) and dinosaurs roamed the earth, the only person we got Easter eggs from was the Easter Bunny. These days, my girls get a couple of kilos of chocolate from each set of indulgent grandparents, more from doting aunts and now they’re even bringing truckloads home from school courtesy of friends and teachers. The Easter Bunny is completely redundant, but unfortunately unable to sit back and retire with a nice big payout, but instead ends up having to sneakily bring very small amounts of chocolate that still look exciting (hence the chocolate Cluedo game – how cool is that? And plush animals because lord knows we don’t have enough of them around here…)

Anyway, getting off track mid-rant, the amount of chocolate the girls get is blardy ridiculous and has turned me into the Easter Nazi - probably closely related to the Christmas Grinch - (turn away from the horror now Susannah, I am your worst nightmare) who insists on monitoring and rationing out every morsel of chocolate the girls are allowed to eat. It’s not the calories, the health ramifications, not even the potential dentist bills, it’s the crazy sugar high/inevitable post sugar high plummet that I can’t, I really just can’t deal with. And it’s school holidays - I have nowhere to hide for weeks LOL At the paltry rate I dole out and the sky-high pile of confectionery here, we’ll still be eating eggs at Christmas, maybe we can leave them out for Santa ;)

Still gotta love pics of happy kids in flan pjs holding up their score. :-)