Mommy, Does the Easter Bunny Have GPS?

There are things I do as a mother to create little memories for my children.  Things like making cookies for Santa, turning graveyards into chocolate pudding and playing Easter Bunny once a year.  This year, the Easter Bunny isn't coming.  The girls will be somewhere else when they wake up Sunday morning.  To me, it feels like the secret hiding places in this house will be crying out for colorfully wrapped, sugary sweet happiness packaged in cellophane and the sound of children searching for another memory.  In reality, I'm having a harder time saying goodbye to the Easter Bunny than the girls are.  It has a lot to do with having to say goodbye to what I thought would never end.  I never thought there would come a day when I wouldn't have my children around.  Or a time when I couldn't be the one tying bows on their baskets, watching them giggle and awe at what I'd crafted for them with my love.
I could be selfish and give away hints that I'll miss them.  Manipulate them into staying so that I can watch them hunt for baskets.  Steal opportunities for them to grow.  Cheat them into loving me more.   This is sounding more and more ridiculous the more I think about it.  More than my mommyhood, what I really want is for my children to love.  Not just me, but themselves and everyone lucky enough to share their lives with them. 

 "Train up a child in the way that she should go, and when she is old, she will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

Aiden on a jellybean high 

  Hope and Nanny helping with the Easter Cupcakes

My How They've Grown

It was almost four years ago Peyton gave up her binky. We had a Bye-bye Binky Party and retired her precious "binchy-ko" in a fitting tribute complete with song and a feast. Tony Jr. had his thumb. Hope, well Hope never had attachment issues as a child. It's a different story now that she's 11. With the advent of text messaging, we'll have to surgically remove her cell phone from her right palm. But, that's another story. Last night, we had a Bye-bye Baba party for Sommer, who is now 2 1/2 and a very big girl. It is probably my fault that she's had her bottle for so long. She is our last baby and somehow that gives me the mommy given right to keep her in diapers and prolong her baba attachment. Okay, so you're not buying it either. I surrender.

So, last night, we gathered at the dinner table, sang a "Happy No Baba" song, clapped to celebrate Sommy being a big girl now and ate ice cream. Get it? Sommy is a big girl now. Ice cream is not baba, but it is still dairy. Okay, only I get it. I made a speech about how Sommer didn't need her baba and Sommer clapped after every testament of her maturity. It was great.