Monday, April 25, 2011

The Journey of an Egg, Part I

While drying my hair this morning, crafting this post carefully in my head (the blow dryer is the perfect combination of white noise and mindless activity to spark a touch of creativity), I went from eggs...to religion...back to eggs...to just a teeny tiny combination of both

As a non-denominational family, we enjoy the secular aspects of many of the Christian holidays, times for family and creating traditions, especially when children are involved, without placing any emphasis on the day's origin.  I preface this post with this because I think it's important to distinguish the difference between our actions and the true holiday itself, and hypocrisy leaves a bitter taste on my tongue.  At the risk of offending people, I liken those individuals who claim to be a particular religion but don't believe the basic tenets to celebrating St. Patrick's Day and wearing green when you haven't got an Irish bone in your body - drives me nuts...  I don't claim to be any religion, but find beauty and joy in some aspects of each one, appreciating parts of all.  Oops, here I go, starting on the religion stuff...backing down quickly now...

That being said (clearly, I hope), I recall fondly the Easter mornings of my childhood, from the basket filled with green plastic "grass," a chocolate bunny poking his delicious ears through the top, to the hunt for carefully dyed eggs, hidden cleverly throughout the house by my mother (the spider plant in the dining room was always a sure-thing).  A stuffed toy bunny was always part of the annual ritual as well, and I managed to gather quite a herd residing on my bed over the years.

I've been looking forward to dyeing Easter eggs with Samantha for some time now, but haven't yet felt she was ready to handle the responsibility (Read:  adhere to my mess-free, anal-retentive, control-freak tendencies).  This year she was all set, and quite excited to give it a go. 


I love letting her think she's in control.  She loves it, too.  


But I think my strict demands that she not violently shake the cups and spill the lovely color all over the counter turned her off and her excitement quickly waned. Peppa Pig and Max & Ruby were calling once again from the living room, leaving me to finish the job alone.


Perfect in their imperfections.  Simple.  There will be many more years to get creative.


My call of, "Come see the finished eggs!" brought her running back to ooh and ah.  


And I managed to con her back to work. 


Sadly, there is an unfortunate result when a certain someone doesn't listen.  While wrinkles with age are said to add character, an extra crack (or a dozen) does no such thing.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

those look like our cracked colored eggs! they are still so pretty! Max only eats the egg whites! and then carries them around all day marveling at his artistic masterpieces!! smiles

Amy Flege said...

your eggs turned out great!! ours were a flop this year:(

Crazy Beautiful Love said...

You dyed eggs!? I didn't have time but wish I would have made it now. They look so good. Maybe next year I'll let Es try to help dye some. You know...work on those fine motor skills of hers. :) -erin

alicia said...

hehe we live near the US border (2hrs) and in our city we like to copy some of the american traditions, like santa claus, halloween and the easter eggs are comming more popular in schools but not related to easter just related to spring and kids day (april 30 is kids day in mexico)

i havent looked yet the significance of the eggs and why its related to resurrection, but it doesnt make sense to me. im a sunday school teacher at church and i think will be funny to paint eggs (because we use paint instead of dying) and hide them and do all the hunting stuff, but i keep telling myself not in resurrection day, i dont want to mess the day. the day we focus on resurection not in eggs, but thats just me, and i guess all the hunting eggs could be done any other day :)

by the way, im trying to figure it out, your eggs were boiled and then dyed? we do a small hole empty the eggs, wash the shell? fill the egg with a small candy or confetti and then hide it. is it fun to crash confetti filled eggs in the head of others lol.

Becca said...

Alicia - I don't know the significance of the eggs, either, although I did hear recently that it's something that's been done for whatever reason for far longer than the origins of Easter itself. We hard boil the eggs then dye or paint or otherwise decorate them, obviously keeping them refrigerated. Some people do put holes in them and blow out the raw insides, but I thought those might be too fragile for Samantha to handle, but crushing them on someone's head sounds fun!!! We hid them then promptly refrigerated them again once they were all found, then ate them in egg salad. I think I'll skip the Journey of an Egg, Part III. LOL

alicia said...

lol is very interesting!! i never knew you hard boiled the eggs, hehe this was really new to me! haha and ive been stalker for a while now of american culture :p

this was past year egg hunting at school , all eggs where filled with candies https://picasaweb.google.com/alicia.llanas/Pascua2010Kinder?authkey=Gv1sRgCNjglrWz5qqLWA#

this year were all filled with confetti, Elias didnt liked much because he doesnt like mess in his head haha but he enjoyed crushing them in his friend's head
http://mihijoelias.blogspot.com/2011/04/de-vacaciones.html

Unknown said...

OH MY GOODNESS!! Look at her smile and how happy she is!!!
I love that you put it outside the door, and I love how beautiful she is. I cant get over it.
and tacky tubberware??? really hush up you did it so perfect and cute.
I cant wait until we can do the easter egg hunts with Skylar and have her get excited about the bunny and Santa. She still doesnt understand completely what its all about, she just likes to open things. haha oh our angels

Melissa said...

I'm excited to color eggs with Claire too. We didn't even bother this year. She wouldn't have appreciated it at all, and I wasn't up for the mess. :)