Easter was pretty low key this year. The Dormouse has figured out that there's not a real Easter Bunny, but hasn't seemed to extrapolate that knowledge to other fictional figures, like some.

"Momma, I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as the Easter Bunny. I think you and Daddy hid the eggs in the yard."

Me: "Is that what you think?"

"Yeah, because the candy in the eggs was the same candy Daddy had leftover last week when I went with him for his presentation at that elementary school." 

I knew that tiny bit of frugality would come back to bite me in the ass.

But, after a slight pause, she still chose to leave the door open for whatever might exist in the realm of possibility:  "Either that, or the Easter Bunny broke into our house after midnight, defeated our alarm system, stole the candy out of the pantry, and hid them in our eggs."

Is it better for her to believe there's no Easter Bunny or to believe that the Easter Bunny is a brilliant, thieving monster who will violate your home when you're helpless to do anything about it and steal even the food out of your kitchen?  I try not to think too much about that. 

The Caterpillar, however, bought into the Easter Bunny myth whole-heartedly.  She talked of nothing but the Easter Bunny throughout their entire egg hunt.  Then when we were on the Metro a couple of hours later and a random woman asked if she had a nice Easter, she spouted off:  

"YES!  And we had a egg hunt and we found Easter eggs that had CANDY in them and my momma and daddy hid them in the yard!"  

So apparently, saying you believe in the Easter Bunny and intellectually believing are two different things for a three year old.  The mom and dad part didn't make it into her impromptu Easter song, however.  So you can tell where her loyalties lie:

Warning: It's the Hotel California of Easter songs.  
Don't feel pressured to watch the whole thing. 

That dreaded bunny also left an assortment of small items in their Easter baskets.  Among them, colored bubbles.  I'm gonna go on record saying this is perhaps the WORST idea the Easter Bunny EVER had and that includes that time the Easter Bunny encouraged them to put plastic eggs in their mouths like torpedoes while he videotaped it.  While those bubbles do surprisingly float out with a distinct color, they are the messiest damn bubbles I've ever seen. 


I was extremely glad of the fact that I made the Ankle Biters take the Bubbles outside to play with them.  I completely regretted the fact that I didn't strip them naked first.  It was less than four minutes before The Caterpillar had her hair so covered in purple bubble goo that she looked like a Halloween costume from the 80s:


And The Dormouse had transformed herself into a real-life vampire child in that same four minutes.

This photo creeps me out more than I can describe.

That stuff says it's washable and I guess in the sense that once your white shirt is stained so red it could implicate you as the main suspect in a spree killing, and that you could then, well... wash that shirt... their advertising is truthful.  When the Shortlings came back in the house, I had them stop short in the entryway while I stripped them naked and carried all their clothes directly to the washing machine, while The KingofHearts carried their bodies to the bathroom for a good scrub down.  It all eventually came of of their hair and clothing, but I had to use half a bottle of stain-treatment for all the splatters and somehow they managed to cause me to have to pre-treat even their underwear.  So... sure it's washable. 

While they weren't looking later, The KoH threw the remaining bubble stuff out.  It was totally worth the big sarcastic "Thanks, Dad!" he got from them later when they finally figured it out.