Egged On

Yesterday I was in a hurry to finish my post because Sadie went from peacefully reading books to herself in the bedroom to crawling over to yank on my leg and ask to be picked up. Because she regularly has conversations with herself, this is verbatim what I hear when Sadie wants to be picked up:

"Up? Up? Pease. Up pease? No. Hold on. Yes. Okay. UP UUUUUUUUP."

"Hold on" is one of those expressions she picked up because she hears it so often, not because we tried to teach it to her. As you can guess, waiting is not this kid's strong suit, but it's hard to complain when you have a kid that effectively scolds herself to be patient.

What I wanted to add was that we really had a great Easter Sunday, thanks to our parents, who regularly make it clear to us that as grandparents go, Sadie couldn't be luckier.

Scott's mom, Sandy, is a fan of ceremony. Whatever the holiday, you can bet she's put hours of time and effort into making it special. When we got to her and Carlos's house, they greeted us with a green felt Easter bucket and instructed us to allow Sadie to search the living room for Easter eggs.

If you'd asked me first, I'd have assured you that 19 months old is too young to hunt for eggs -- I mean, she only recently learned what an egg is, much less grasp the concept of what it means to collect them. Sadie proved me entirely wrong. While she was a bit confused at first, the minute we led her over to an egg, then allowed her to "find" it and lavished praise upon her for picking it up and placing it in her basket, she couldn't wait to find the rest. She walked around the living room, the basket in one hand and my hand in the other, finding eggs on bookcases, on top of tables, behind picture frames. She LOVED it.

At the end, she was rewarded with a crazy giant Easter basket, but really that was a gift for me. Or my stomach, anyway. All Sadie wanted to do was hunt for more eggs. She settled for a giant breakfast of homemade croissants, berries, eggs and bacon. Sandy even made a "Mona Cake," which is a Catalonian Easter tradition, since Carlos is from Barcelona.

When we got home, Sadie passed out. Two hours later she woke up in full sugar withdrawal, so to distract her we took her to my parents' house, where we celebrated Easter in my family's favorite style: relaxed and nontraditional. She played with some new toys, then Scott went out and brought us back Italian food for dinner. In short, Sadie spent the entire day with some of the people she loves most in the world: Yaya, Yayo, Grandma and Grandpa. Thanks, guys, for showing us a fabulous Easter Sunday. Some people say Easter is about Jesus, or zombies, but for us it's about gorging ourselves on comfort food and appreciating our awesome, unique family.