I think these happy faces say it all — we have officially overdosed on all things Easter. It’s taken me until just now to fully come out of my Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg induced coma to string a series of semi-coherent words together. I fully believe that the purpose of holidays is to have an excuse to eat all things junk all day long.

Our Easter activities started last week with a neighborhood Easter Egg hunt organized by a thoughtful neighbor across the street. Probably about 20 kids converged on this family’s side lawn and proceeded to tromp, trample, and trounce through her landscaping to scoop up dozens of psychedelic colored eggs. This was Co’s first hunt and Mo, being the dutiful big sister that she is, left her in the dust to score as much candy as her three year old self could. Once Co figured out that eggs = candy, she was tearing up flower beds and overturning shrubs. Neither she nor Mo had a real thought out plan as to gather the eggs; it was a true free-for-all.

The following Saturday was our church sponsored Easter Egg hunt, which I helped to set up. DH brought the girls and at the appointed hour, they, along with what could have easily been 100 other kids, wrought havoc on the grounds all in order to pick up the 1700 (yes, 1-7-0-0) eggs. Evidently, DH had prepped Mo and Co on strategy this time around. Instead of staying with the pack when the “go” was given, he advised them to move to the flanks, effectively decimating the perimeter and then securing the back end of the area. So in essence, while the masses were log-jammed at the starting point, our girls could pick and pluck their way to Easter Egg overload.

Remember the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan, when the doors to the boat open and the troops storm the beach? Yeah, it was a lot like that.

Saturday afternoon, I took Mo to see Alice in Wonderland at the Sandler Center with some friends of ours. She has not seen the Disney movie, so the White Rabbit became the Easter Bunny, followed by incessant questioning as to why he had a watch instead of a basket. Oy! When we got home, the mailman dropped off a ginormous box from DH’s parents that was chock full of Easter Eggs, candy, chicken shaped whistle necklaces and assorted seasonal tchotchkes.

Sunday morning dawned bright and early and I was able to stave off the Easter baskets for a while with the promise of wearing their new Easter dresses. Trying to get a decent photo of the two of them. . .looking in the same direction. . .without the baskets. . .pretty much impossible.
After church, we had dinner at my parents house, which yielded yet another set of baskets, more chocolates, more jelly beans. Just more, more, more. Co’s fine motor skills haven’t developed enough yet that she can peel the paper off of a tootsie roll, so she was content to eat it through the paper. Mo, on the other hand, left a trail of wrappers in her wake as she sampled from the three baskets at her disposal. My brother also came down for the holiday, which just added to the pandemonium as Uncle Christopher likes to tickle, tackle, and toss in the air.

Throughout it all, I have done my best to impart the true reason for the celebration of Easter, though trying to make death and resurrection more comprehensible for a toddler is a challenge. And of course, tying that together with bunnies, eggs, and Peeps. . .well, I think I could explain the glycolysis, the Krebs Cycle, and the electron transport chain in less time (yes, it always comes back to A&P).

Top off the week with a visit from Max from Max and Ruby at the library and my girls are practically begging me for a respite from all things rabbits. Well, maybe that’s just my wishful thinking. Perhaps I need a peanut butter egg to sort it out. . .

So, I come from a family of farters. Yes, people in my family fart, break wind, pass gas, boofah — you name it (as it relates to farting, and they’ve done it). And for as much as my parents have chastised my brother and I for it, we always laugh, because it’s always funny. Farting is funny — I admit it. Over the course of my 30 years, we’ve run through the gamut of variations on “Pull My Finger” and the ever popular “It was the dog” or “Whoever smelt it, dealt it” defenses. Trying to pin the offense on someone else is the oft-employed defense, and no one is immune, not even infants.

Case in point, my mom left me with my grandmother one day when I was a a few months old. Gram was getting her Jane Fonda on while I was cooling out in my ExerSaucer or some such. My mom came back in to get me while Gram was getting ready to do some bicycle kicks. Long story short, when Gram’s legs went up, the fart came out, and the first thing she said was, “Oh my! The baby must have gas!” Gee, thanks, Gram.

That being said, it shouldn’t come as any surprise to me that my own, dear sweet Mo and Co would be anything less than gas-tastic when it comes to cutting the cheese. And yet, I am stunned at the volume (i.e. loudness) and duration of these bottom blasts!

Yesterday at breakfast, for example, Co was puckering up her face for what I assumed was her morning constitutional. And I asked her, “Are you doing a poo-poo?” to which she replied, “Poooooo. . .. Pooooo” her hands gripping the sides of her hair chair as she gained leverage for what was to come. I keep telling her if she would eat the vegetables I give her instead of pushing them around, she wouldn’t have this problem, but hey, I’m just the mom. What do I know?

So Co is working out her digestive issues as I gently implore Mo (for the 10th time) to please eat her breakfast, when a a fart of adult proportions shakes the table, upturns two cups of milk and lifts Co at least four inches out of her seat. I swear, I thought my father was in the house, hiding in the hallway about to leap out with a “Gotcha!” and a smile. It was all I could do to hold in my laughter and give her a quick, “What do you say?!”

“Coose me!” she smiles.

And the boofahs keep coming! Somehow Mo got it in her head that gas from your body actually propels you forward. She started walking around the house saying, “You boofah (pbbbbbttt!) and then go like this (ssssssssstttt)!” Well, I’ll let you see what she means (turn up your speakers).

Being the big child that I am, farting plus a child simulating fart-induced jet propulsion never gets old.

Today, Co, Mo and I were wrapping up lunch, talking about our afternoon plans, when Mo breaks wind with both hands. “Morgan!” I said, turning to her with wide eyes.

“I know, Mom.” she said. “That scared me, too!”

I’m still laughing. . .

So I got a chain letter in the mail the other day. Well, let me re-phrase that — Mo got a chain letter in the mall. Actually, it a pre-printed letter from a friend, inviting her to join a sticker club. All Mo (or more appropriately, all I had to do) was copy the letter 12 times, send one blank one and one completed one to six friends within six days, yadda, yadda, yadda and you’ll get some stickers in the mail. Gee, thanks. And as much as I didn’t want to do copy, address enevelopes and all the rest, I did it for a couple of reasons:

1) Who doesn’t like getting mail, especially something that isn’t a bill or a solicitation?
2) It seemed like a good post-nap, pre-dinner time filler for us, and when I labeled it an “art project”, well shoot, it was like Mo hit the jackpot!
3) Once upon a time, all written correspondence I had with people was through letters, or more acurrately, through letter writing.

And so, not only did I copy the letters, let Mo do them up with stickers and pen and crayon drawings, I included a short personalized note to the moms of the children that live far away from us. No missives, mind you, I just kept it short and sweet. Still, in that one page scrawl, I hoped to convey that even though I sent them this chain letter, they and their family were important to me.

You see, I love to write. I love a good, quality stationery, preferrable mongrammed (yes, I’m a little snooty – or is it snotty?). I even went as far as to make my own occasion cards. As a teenager and into my adult years, I wrote in a journal almost every day. I have a huge plastic tub full of my old journals that I may or may not let the girls read when they get older — maybe we’ll have our own version of The Notebook. But what I wrote most of all were letters — I had pen pals in Australia and in London. We took letter writing classes in school and learned the proper way to express greetings. I even did the regular ol’ chain letter — copying some epistle ten times by hand. Notice it was 10 times — yeah, this was back when I walked to school, 5 miles, in the snow, uphill, both ways and I had no shoes! I wrote letters to the boys that I “dated” who lived in other states (yea, my dad was a big supporter of that). Back when stamps cost 0.29 cents, I could burn through a book of stamps in about 10 days. Really, I was that proflific. And also because, when you wrote to people, they wrote back.

I had 11 page, college ruled, double sided letters on whose margins I doodled before stuffing it into a #10 sized envelope and running it to the mailbox at the end of the driveway. My mom would inevitably ask me what on earth I had to talk about for 10 plus pages, certain that I just wrote “I miss you, I love you,” over and over again to some broken down boy. Honestly, I’m sure that was in there, but it was probably a typical teen angst filled, play-by-play account of my day and the injustices perpetrated against me as a result of not being able to hang out with him/my friends/at the movies/after my part-time job/yadda,yadda,yadda.

During my college years, prior to the full on embrace of email, prior to the advent of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and all these other social networking megasites, people either used the phone, actually got up and looked for someone, or wrote letters. DH and I were “a-courtin'” around this time and we would write eachothter letter with a fervent regularity even though we still spent time together after class or on the week-ends. What a cap to my day when after dinner with DH and friends at the UC, I check my mail for the first time in a few days and there’s a letter from DH. Even now, I get a thrill when I see an evelope addressed to me — by hand! Or when their return address is handwritten, too! Homemade Christmas cards! Woo-hoo! Thank you notes (ohhh, I do love a thank you note)! Even better, the I was just thinking about you type of note, which has sadly been stripped down to a hastily thumbed text sent in-between stoplights on the way to pick up Taylor/Tyler/Madison/Ellie et. al from football/basketball/soccer/ballet/swimming. There’s a lot to be said about that.

This sticker club exercise had me doing several things that I often complain I don’t have time to do — spending time with my girls, catching up with my friends, having a chance to write for pleasure. And oh yeah, we’re going to get some stickers in the mail, too!

I said I would do it, but honestly, self-imposed tee-totaling really blows.