Easter 2010

When the new year started, I had all kinds of ambitions to blog more regularly. As it turns out, I’m a slacker.

Let’s not dwell on the past. Let us seize the day.

Today is Easter, a holiday in some significant religions. We’re not the religious type, so it’s mostly just another day, but heck, let’s celebrate anyway.

Gina bought Jack a nice Easter basket filled with some toys, and 13 eggs to hunt for. Jack is just shy of 18 months old; he’s not yet at the point where I can suggest that he looks for the eggs in stealthy locations. But, we thought he’d enjoy picking them up anyway, so I laid them around the yard in obvious places; some in his toy house, one on the slide, a bunch on the lawn. Some of the eggs are electronic; they call to him every few seconds saying “here I am!”.

I followed him around with a bag and pointed out the first egg. I don’t know what he thought was going on, but picked up the egg and put it in the bag. We lead him to the vicinity of the other eggs. He picked one up that had a toy in it; it had a matchbox car. He LOVES cars, so became excited to find more. There were 5 in all. Prior to the first car, he was very studious about the whole thing.

There were 5 cars hidden in the yard. He always tries to carry things himself; he’ll take a minute to stack them up just right to provide the best chance for success, but 5 is too many. He’d drop one, pick it up, then drop another.

The Easter basket had a chocolate bunny and a 5 pack of cars. Whenever cars are involved, everything else is inconsequential, so we had to get him into the cars as fast as possible.

Breakfast consisted of Munchkins, bread, and whatever else Gina gave him. It wasn’t his standard menu.

Some time later, Jack and I went to the park. Jack doesn’t know any age limit on the playground. He climbs everything. I’m always on top of him, but fewer things require my interception. The only real risk is that when he sees an opening, he wants to just go walk through it not realizing there’s a 5 foot drop. I always have to be there to stop him. But, slides and tunnels are no longer an issue for him.

After the park, he got a bit cranky. He didn’t want to go in the house, but that’s where all the cool things are, so we had to go in anyway. That set him off, but I think that was just the last straw for whatever was bothering him. He was pretty cranky, uncharacteristically so, for quite a while. He felt better after lunch.

For a couple of carefully considered reasons, the Allard family declined participation in the usual family fan-fare this holiday. We had dinner at home with the Daudt’s and Gina’s cousin Dave. Of course there was a ridiculous amount of food and deserts. It was a great time. Dave, Rafael and I made arrangements to start working on our diving certification next weekend (Rafael is an instructor). We talked about movies and tv, per usual, and Rafael and I discussed work, per usual. That’s a much easier conversation now that we work at the same company.

Jack has another temper episode before bed. He freaked out because he wanted his bottle, but I made it a point to calm him down before bringing him down stairs. I played some videos of him on my phone; that fascinates him. Once he was done freaking out, he had a bottle and went to bed.

Jack doesn’t freak out often. He has little tantrums here and there, as is expected of an 18 month old, but it’s rarely dramatic. He slept plenty last night, so I don’t think he was tired. His teeth might be bothering him; that’s our catch-all explanation when we can’t figure out anything specific.

Overall, I’d give today an A+. Good time had by all, as far as I know.