Even with a Runny Nose and Croupy Cough and General Malaise, the Easter Bunny made it!

Happy Easter all. It was not exactly the most exciting first Easter for the girls. The night before, Nicole and I talked a lot about the sort of traditions we want to start with the girls, but when Sunday came, we did a whole lot of nothing, as planned. Traditions will start when the girls’ cognitive development include long-term memory, which means not for a couple of years. Today we just wanted to relax. I am still trying to get my energy back after spending all week sick and we just wanted to do nothing.

My brother and Mina and the kids spent the weekend in Rhode Island, so they stopped by here on their way home. They picked up BBQ on the way over, and that was our not-so-traditional Easter dinner. Nothing says Christ Had Risen like a chopped Cobb salad and pulled pork sandwich.

More traditionally, however, we told Leif and Skye that the Easter Bunny stopped at our apartment and hid baskets for them, which meant the Easter Bunny (us) had to run out to the carrot patch (Rite Aid) and spend crazy money on baskets and candy that you know will be 75 percent off in less than 12 hours. A bag of mini peanut butter cups in pastel foil for six dollars? It’s just wrong. I’m not even sure Leif and Skye will eat them. These kids are little Haute Cuisiners. A basket filled with Uni and shrimp and curry noodles and bizarrely flavored Japanese potato chips is probably more up their alley. I’ll tuck that thought away for next year.

Madeline seems to have a decreased mealtime appetite, and I think that is because she is eating all the paper she can get her little hands on. She makes a bee line to the paper shredder to eat whatever she can find there. If I drop so much as a scrap on the floor, she will find it, crumple it into her fist and push it is her mouth. Yesterday, she grabbed a whole sheet and I started to chase her and she actually looked at me, squealed, and the took off, with a bounce in her step. So I think we just played out first “I’m Gonna Get You” game. Madeline also stood with no hands for the first time this weekend, for at least ten seconds! Getting closer….

Avery is clapping, but only if you clap for about 20 minutes for her while saying in a high-pitched voice CLAP CLAP CLAP. She likes to warm up by watching us do all the work. Avery also started sucking her thumb yesterday. Just popped it in her mouth. We are trying to put an end to that. Also both discovered this past week that they really love eating breaded chicken cutlets!

And both babies smelled like Sausage McMuffins today. Which is strange, since I haven’t had on of those EVER and Nicole’s last one must have been close to a decade ago. Sausage McMuffin and strawberries. Strange.

I have been on a reading binge. This happens. Normally I’ll read maybe one book in the span of ten days, so like three a month. Now I am putting away a book almost every two days. I’ve been reading at night instead of watching nothing on TV, and since I was sick, I spent a lot of time laying in bed and reading or laying on the floor with the girls, reading while they attended to their very important work. I just finished a fascinating book about a woman who escaped a polygamist cult (the Warren Jeffs one). And I am now reading a book written by a surgeon about, well, surgery. I’m officially in biography mode. All I know is life is better if I have a good book to look foreword to reading. Links to all the books I am reading are in the sidebar.

Pictured above, us on Easter morning. Below that, all of us, minus Nicole and my brother. Below that, Maddie and Avery mesmerized by Skye. And, finally, sadly, below that, our nesting dove lost a baby today. Two doves are making a nest under our AC. Her egg rolled out of her nest today and crashed on the AC unit below our window. So sad. I wonder who the bird community mourns this sort of loss? Inexplicably, she then ate parts of the egg. I’m sure this makes sense in the bird world