We started Easter weekend festivities with an egg hunt at our neighborhood gardens.  I’ve never been to an official egg hunt before.  When I was little my mother hit eggs in the house.  Hid.  That’s why it is a hunt.  Here the eggs were scattered about in the open requiring you to just scoop everything up. 

We went to see the age group before Z’s go.  I said that we’d develop strategy.  I was being sarcastic.  Sometimes that is lost on people.  We marched over to her field.  The SO kept explaining to Z what to do.  Head for that clump, pick them up, if you get 3 or 4 that’s enough.  I discovered that I had video on my camera.  We have no video of Z since we don’t lean towards the obsessive end of the parenting spectrum.  I figured we should have some for posterity. 

Here’s what my video is like.  Z is doing the countdown and then she runs into the field.  After that you here the SO screaming, “NO! GO THERE! BY YOUR FEET! GO THERE!” and on and on.  I was whispering, “What the hell is wrong with you?  This is not a competitive sport.” Ah, good memories.

Freckles and I went to the fanciest dog park ever.  It has a pond and a beach.  She went totally ballistic over all the smells.  She was quivering and didn’t know where to go first.  She hates water but she liked the marsh grass at the edges.  By the end she was so blissed out she couldn’t get off the couch for the rest of the day.

We decided to go out to eat Sunday.  I saw Z’s outfit and literally held my hand in front of my face and averted my eyes.  I told her she wasn’t wearing that because she didn’t match.  She said that her father said she had to wear the leggings under the dress. I contemplated that and then asked if he had known she was going to pair hot pink leggings with her neon orange dress.  My eyes felt like they were going to bleed.  She said he didn’t and I convinced her that black leggings would be better.  She was much easier on the eyes until she put her bright pink coat over the whole outfit.

She chose spaghetti for dinner at the restaurant.  I don’t think she eats many meals at her mom’s that require utensils so correct table manners have been a struggle for us.  She twirled her spaghetti (a previous lesson that pained her Italian father) and then lifted it high above her head and tried to drop it into her mouth.  She seemed shocked that we were not supportive of this.  I showed her that after she twirled she should use her knife to hold down the loose edges and break them off.  She started out using the knife with the dull side down.  Then she decided that eating with manners was way too hard so she wasn’t going to eat at all.   That was fine with us.

But then her father decided to order a piece of cake.  He ate it in front of her.  The child was so delusional that she asked for some after refusing to eat the meal she ordered.  She again seemed shocked that this didn’t work for her.

Table manners are going to kill us all.