We had a wonderful Easter week, and we were so busy having fun and celebrating this special holiday and wonderful time of the year that blogging about it took a backseat. Then we spent the next week being so busy cleaning up and recuperating from all the celebrating that blogging took another backseat.
So...
Happy (late) Easter!
Before I get into Easter though, I have a little background confession. Sometimes I really miss teaching. A LOT. I am very, very grateful that I get to stay home and spend my days with my little boy; however, sometimes I yearn to be back in my classroom. I miss having twenty five years old sitting in a circle around me soaking up new stuff and thirsting for more. I miss the satisfaction of teaching and the evidence of learning. I miss the girls I taught with. I miss the structure and routine of a school day. I miss being showered every day and dressed in nice, clean clothes. I miss feeling competent. Some mornings when Coop and I stand at the front door and wave as the school bus drives by, I want to run out and jump on board. I had a great job.
However, no amount of reminiscing could ever make me want to give up my current great job. I might spend most days un-showered, dressed in "workout" clothes, feeling like the most incompetent mother in the whole entire world, and running around senselessly trying to find a missing (but beloved) sippy cup, but this is the job of a lifetime. And when I get that teaching itch, as I recently did before Easter, I have my little boy to humor me as I get it out of my system.
Back to Easter week...
I had the teaching itch. Bad. So I decided that every day that week, Coop and I would do some type of activity in honor of Easter or spring. We would make all kinds of crafts and do all this great fun stuff. I was so excited! I should have blogged about this before I started attempting each thing so all the mothers who read this could politely say, "Have you lost your mind???" or "Isn't your son 1 1/2 and incapable of sitting still?" or "You should rename your blog 'Two Fools and a Baby.'" (Sorry, Karl, to throw you under the bus with me on that one.) Honestly, we did have fun though. Each thing turned out crazy and messy, but it all led to a special, wonderful Easter.
Activity Bunny Pops:
We took these ingredients...
and turned them into these...
Cute, huh?! And pretty easy too! Cooper helped me use the bunny cutter to punch out a couple ears from the marshmallows, but then all he wanted to do was eat the jellybeans. As it turns out, the boy loves some jellybeans! Although our activity this day was supposed to be "Bunny Pops," I guess it really was "Practice Eating Jellybeans Without Choking." He also helped me by taking all the ribbons off the lollipop sticks after I tied them on. Yes, this activity ended up being completed by myself while Cooper napped. Nonetheless, we had fun punching out 4 ears together! :)
Activity Finger Painting:
When Cooper and I did handprint art at Christmas, it was super easy and not messy. However, much has changed in a few months with this rambunctious boy! I printed off two large Easter eggs for Coop to finger paint. He wasn't really into the rub-the-paint-around-on-the-paper type of finger painting as much as he enjoyed the slap-the-paint-really-hard-so-it-splatters type. I cleaned paint off the blinds, windows, wall, floor, light fixture, table, and chairs after we were done. His eggs were colorful though! I had also printed a plain Easter egg, and I gave him a paintbrush and yellow paint for that. He really enjoyed using the paintbrush, and surprisingly enough, he did better with the paintbrush than his hands. We turned the yellow egg into a chick with handprint wings and feet. Despite the messiness, this was our favorite activity. Coop loved "painting," and I loved his artwork! (no pictures during the activity...for obvious reasons)
Activity Dying Easter Eggs:
Karl was home for this special activity. As a little girl I LOVED dying eggs. I think I might have to give him a couple more years before he gets into this though. When we had gone to the store to get all our craft stuff earlier that week, I didn't check the eggs I was buying. I always check the eggs. When I got the eggs out of the refrigerator later that week to boil them, I opened them to find that 5 were majorly cracked and broken. I'm not sure if they were that way at the store or if Little Man stepped on them in the cart or if I wasn't gentle in putting them in the car or what. That left us with only 7 to dye; however, that ended up being fine because Coop enjoyed throwing the eggs into the cups, and was bored with the whole thing after throwing the first few in. While we waited for them to change colors, Karl and Coop wondered off and played. Neither of them was interested in dying eggs with me! I got tickled when we took them out of the cups though because Cooper was used to playing with plastic eggs and kept trying to squeeze the dyed eggs to open them like he does the plastic ones! He started getting frustrated quickly when they wouldn't open, so we wrapped this activity up fast!
Activity Sugar Cookies:
I gave Karl a list to choose from for our Easter dessert. Coconut cream pie, coconut cupcakes or cake, or sugar cookies. He surprised me by choosing sugar cookies. I didn't have any Easter or spring cookie cutters, so we made a quick trip to Hobby Lobby and got one shaped like a bunny (also used for the bunny pop ears) and one shaped like an egg. I baked and started icing the cookies during Coop's nap, and then Karl and I finished icing them that night. I don't normally like to make any type of rolled cookie because I'm not good at getting the dough even with a rolling pin, but these ended up being so good! On Easter, I piped little whipped cream tails on the bunnies. Cooper's role for this activity: taste tester!
(Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie recipe from allrecipes.com-cookies and icing both had almond extract, which gave them a different taste than typical sugar cookies, and the cream cheese in the cookies made them soft and chewy)
All these fun activities led us up to Easter morning, but that special day deserves a post to itself! Stay tuned!
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