The week before Easter we started our Easter activities. First, I hosted an Easter egg hunt in our backyard for the playgroup in our ward. It was a lot of fun! We counted how many eggs we had and told all the kids how many they were allowed to get, so everyone got an equal amount. It was so adorable, when the older kids found all of their eggs, they would go around and help the little ones find more eggs. They would go to James and say, "Here James! I found you an egg!" and put it in his basket. So sweet! James loved the candy. He has had candy before, but this time he was a little crazy about it. He would try to stuff it in his mouth, wrapper and all and if you took it away from him, even just to take the wrapper off he would give you this angry cave man yell!
The day before Easter the city was putting on a large egg hunt, so I thought it would be fun to go with James. It was huge! They had an entire large section just for 2-3 year olds, so that is where we waited. James did not want to wait. There was a small ribbon barrier keeping him from the eggs and having to look at them but not go get them was torture for him! At one point he threw such a fit I thought we might have to just pack up and go home before it even got started. Luckily he was able to calm down. Once it started, it was chaos! They allowed the parents to go get the eggs with the kids and it was every man for himself! Seriously, it reminded me of stampedes on Black Friday where people just lose their minds. I was trying to let James go find his own eggs, but apparently I didn't get the memo because all the other parents were just scooping as many eggs as they could grab into their kid's basket.
The red arrow is pointing to the one egg James was able to get into his basket. By the time he bent over, picked it up, and put it into his basket, the rest of the eggs on the entire field were gone. He didn't understand that of course, so he kept walking around looking for more eggs. I was watching all the other parents and their kids and saw toddlers James' age and size with 20 eggs. 20!!! Like they could physically pick up 20 eggs in 10 seconds. It just really bothered me! Not that James really needed more candy or anything, but what is the point of an egg hunt for toddlers if it becomes an egg hunt for grown adults?
James came back to this bush where he saw eggs before, hoping they were still there. Nope. Sorry kid :(
Later that afternoon, we bravely tried our hand at dying eggs. James loved it! He didn't have patience for the little dipping spoon, he would just reach his little hand right into the water to get the egg. He and I both ended up covered in dye! He also didn't really understand the concept of waiting for the egg to turn color. As soon as we would put one in, he wanted to take it out and see what color it was.
Sunday afternoon he got to do an egg hunt with his cousins, using the leftover eggs from the playgroup. Aunt Robin did a great job of hiding the eggs, she made the "tricky" ones for the older kids and the easy to find ones for James. See Dallas? He is ready to find some eggs!
1 comment:
Ugh, that community egg hunt sounded miserable!! I CANNOT believe that parents were scooping up the eggs- I would have been so annoyed!!! I went to a much smaller version of that once when Teya was 3- it was indoors at a community center, during a toddler hour that we went to each week, so it wasn't super huge, but it was pretty much the same thing. Teya got so stressed out b/c she had to hurry to get eggs and she only got a few. There were some nice parents though who saw her crying (she cried a lot back then, even more than now) and gave her some from their kid's basket. Anyways, after that experience, I saw pictures on someone's blog from a community egg hunt very similar to yours and thought it looked really overwhelming and knew we could never handle all that! Sounds like you discovered the more low-key, fun way to do Easter egg hunts! Wish our kids could have been there for the cousin hunt!
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