Egg-citement

When I was a kid, we didn’t celebrate Easter, save it be for this one tradition of going to our neighbor’s house to dye Easter eggs with a PAAS dye kit every year.  For many years, dying eggs was my Easter, and I liked it.  Now, Easter has taken on a whole new and way deeper than the eggshell meaning for me and my little family, but I will hold fast to this tradition of dunking and turning out colored eggs in a way that triggers my nostalgia, so long as my littles continue to enjoy the ritual as much as I do. 

Daddy took charge, so the situation stayed until control the whole time.  In other words, he made sure that our table and floor didn’t change colors.  Each kid got to pick one color and one egg at a time, but this limitation didn’t hamper their creativity or motivation one bit.  They took turns carefully dipping and turning and stirring their egg in the cup until they were satisfied that it was exactly right.  They had far more patience with coloring each egg than I ever remembered having with mine when I was a little girl.  I don’t recall that my eggs ever got past the pastel point and turned out to be the sort of bright and intense colors that theirs were.

Each of my children handled the process slightly differently.  Bella was very cautious and meticulous.  She inspected each egg, never spilled a drop, was precise about exactly which color she wanted next and which egg would be the chosen one; and as each one turned out, she held it up for us to concur that it was, in fact, perfected.  To Gabe, dying eggs was just for fun, like the many other craft projects he has under his belt from preschool and home.  He was also very tidy, but he handled his dying with equal parts conscientiousness and lightheartedness.  Ari was a wild woman in all this.  She was thrilled to death with everything about the project from the rainbow of colors, her freedom to choose, her ability to hold the spoon and stir the egg without anyone’s assistance, and everything in between.  She whacked the egg with the back of her spoon and laughed mischeviously when we cautioned her not to crack her egg, she lifted and dropped the egg into each colored solution splashing everything around her like a crazed artist.  She touched, smelled, tasted, and kissed… yes, kissed, every egg that she colored. 

           

We, in the Taylor household, enjoy savoring the holidays and making each one last a whole lot longer than one day, so it should go without saying that this is only the first of three Easter posts to come.  Stay tuned for the others…