Current mood: accomplished
The egg coloring tradition continues in our family. I grew up coloring Easter eggs as a kid and I couldn't wait to pass down that tradition to my own kids one day. So after Mia was born I wasted no time in exposing her to that tradition. Mia was only 8 months old for her first Easter I still had her color eggs (with my help). It was pretty messy with the dye and it made me nervous for the following year when she would be a toddler!
Well the time has come and I have been wracking my brain for weeks now on how I would approach the egg coloring dilemma. Mia is at the age now where she is very independent and does not like it, AT ALL, for you to show her how to do something or correct her on things. She always wants to figure it out herself and do it herself without any help. So hmmm.... I knew the traditional water dye was out for sure!!! All I could imagine was her either trying to drink it, pour it on herself, or throw it at me!! Then I thought finger colors!! I almost went with that idea until I remembered how hard it is to get that stuff off her hands! Eventhough it says washable it sure takes a long time and tons of scrubbing (not to mention a few days) before her hands go back to normal. I didn't want her in her pretty Easter dress tomorrow with rainbow hands! Hmmm.... crayons?! I thought of those too but kept envisioning her pressing the crayon to hard against the egg and cracking them. Then AH-HA! I got it!!! Washable markers!!! They are pretty easy to use and it doesn't take much to color with them!
So a couple of days ago I picked up some washable markers at the store. Then the day finally came and it was time to color eggs!!!! I dressed Mia up in one of my black shirts, put her feeding chair in the kitchen and got the camera ready. Adrian helped set her up on her chair and was the one who handed her the different markers and eggs.... oh and cleaned her up too in between, while I went picture crazy!
We handed her an egg and her first marker. She was shocked by the marker and tried to color her chair! When we told her to "color the eggie" she listened and started to color it with the marker. Her eyes lit up and she gave the biggest smile!!! She scribbled all over the egg until everything was blue... her hands, her mouth, the egg and even her cheek! haha We then gave her a new egg, took away her colored one, and gave her a new colored marker! She got mad at first (for us taking away her marker and colored egg) but soon was coloring her new egg.
She had so much fun. I only boiled 5 eggs for her to color and that seemed like enough. By the end she was a pro and using all sorts of colors on her eggs. The eggs actually looked pretty cool at the end.
The one thing I found funny was how Mia didn't like her hands dirty. She kept having Adrian clean them off with wipee before she would continue, so needless to say we went through alot of wipees.
When she finished all her eggs it was time to clean up. Thats when she completely had a full on, red-faced-not breathing-screaming tantrum of epic proportions!!! She blew up because we took her finished eggs away and markers. The only saving grace was that we told her she would take a bath and right away she stopped crying and ran upstairs to jump in the tub (thats her favorite past time... baths). Luckily all the marker came off her hands and face in the tub and she was all sparkling clean again! YAY!
We had so much fun. I can't wait to do it again next year... not sure what method I will use. I am kind of liking the marker idea... at least for a couple of more years before she finally graduates to dye.
