Black Eyes, Diaper Changes, and Chocolate Easter Eggs

[mamabusypants]

http://mamabusypants.blogspot.com/2009/04/black-eyes-diaper-changes-and-chocolate.html

Easter was pretty low-key at our house. Everyone has been sick, so we ordered pizza. And yes, I am aware that it's totally tacky to order pizza on the day of our Lord's resurrection.

The celebrations started Saturday morning at a neighbor's backyard Easter egg hunt. When I got home from work (I taught a morning English class), Mr. Busypants busily made plans to host his own hunt.

"My friends find eggs in my trees?" he'd ask me.
"Next year we'll do an Easter egg hunt here," I told him.

Easter morning, Miss Chattyshoes had a little drama because she specifically picked out a flowered onesie that she apparently HAD to wear. There's nothing like dressing an enraged toddler in her Easter best, although it helped that her new little white mary janes from Target had heels that clicked on the hardwood floor.

More drama ensued later in the afternoon after lunch when in an effort to laughingly sneak away from Daddy's grasp, Miss Chattyshoes tripped and banged her face on the coffee table. She woke up the next morning with a nice, puffy shiner.

This was not the first black and blue mark of the holiday weekend. On Thursday, the school nurse called to inform me that Mr. Busypants, in a chasing game of his own, smacked into the playground equipment and sustained a rather large bonk on his forehead that grew over the weekend. Days later he has a bruise on his forehead; if it were Ash Wednesday it might look like he had been sacramentally anointed.

My poor, battered kids pretty much matched.

But a head injury did not stop Mr. Busypants from revisiting the egg hunt that he was dying to host in his own backyard. I finally handed him a basket full of jellybean-filled eggs and told him to "hide" them in the front bushes.

This satisfied him.

Monday mornings post-holiday are usually pretty rough, but this time, Mr. Busypants did alright. He eagerly dressed so he'd be allowed to eat French toast sticks and watch a little Pinocchio before school (an Easter basket treat and the latest moving-visual obsession).

The morning with Miss Chattyshoes ran less smoothly, in spite of the arrival of Miss Sassypants, her pint-sized mentor from across the street. Perhaps the irritating puffiness of her eye put her in a funk, but whatever the case, she was clingy all morning; I got absolutely nothing done.

Miss Chattyshoes certainly accomplished something, however. Because of the lack of sense of smell that is accompanying this awful head cold I've been nursing for over a week, I went into the morning diaper change blind and unprepared. As a result, a big stinking chocolate-covered Easter egg of her own rolled out of her diaper.

So (as I've done with Mr. Busypants many a times during his toddler years) I grabbed her by the ankles and carried her swaying little body upside down across the room to find the wipes, listening to her giggle as I observed her chocolate-covered crack; I picked up the package with my teeth and hauled her back to the family room.

What else could I do?

Later that morning, I came across of what was either an unwrapped cheap, waxy mini chocolate egg that the girls tore into earlier, or a tiny turd that somehow escaped. I looked down in horror, knowing that I had to pick it up and not knowing which it was.

Of course, I had to know, so I took a wiff. Thankfully it was the chocolate.