Dear Young Moms,
Congratulations and welcome to the club! Easter is a great time of year. It’s an important religious holiday, you get to dress up your kids in adorable outfits (enjoy this while you can), and there is candy.
If this is your first Easter as a mother, please allow me to share my twenty year’s of parenting experience with you. This is hard-won experience, gained from tears (mine) and disappointment (also mine).
Take Time to Make the Season Special.
Your kids won’t remember much of what you do for them while they are little. It’s better to focus on one special thing than to stress too much over a dozen.
Dye eggs, OR make a cake shaped like a bunny, OR plan an Easter egg hunt. Pinterest has great ideas for any of these things. Pick one and really enjoy it. Set your expectations low and just don’t expect the kids to be as excited as you. They may be, but that is an unexpected bonus.
Take Pictures.
You newbies have a real advantage, what with your Insta-phone iGrams.
When my kids were babies, I had to use a camera with film, like a savage. Then I had to not overexpose the film and pay to have it developed. And then pick it up, sort out the bad pictures, and mail duplicated pictures to my mother and mother-in-law. I probably still have an envelope of photos waiting to be sorted.
I know you hate hearing this, but it is absolutely true: this time will be gone before you know it. What’s to come is good, but it’s not the same. Capture as much of this sweet time as you can so you’ll have something to look at and cry over when they are 15 and not talking to you.
Get the Good Candy.
Your own mother may have taught you this important fact: you get to take some of the kids’ candy and call it the Mommy Tax. The Mommy tax is the greatest thing ever. It also is in effect for any candy-getting occasion from Halloween to Christmas.
This is back-pay for gestation and birth. And stretch marks. Don’t you dare feel guilty about skimming some off the top. You are teaching the important lessons about sharing, taxation and who’s in charge.
So, because of the Mommy Tax, don’t cheap out and get bad candy. I remember buying a candy bunny and not noticing it was “chawklet”, some strange combination of sugar, wax and…brown.
We just got the cutest Easter basket full of the good stuff from Hershey’s. I visited their booth at the BlissDom blog conference in late February. They were promoting their Hershey’s Bunny Trail, a collection of Easter hints and tips from bloggers.
Check it out at www.CelebrateWithHersheys.com. I especially liked reading about traditional Polish egg decoration, Pisanki, at Tania’s blog, Midnight Blue Says.
Thanks to Hershey for the beautiful basket of treats. I’ve already extracted my share. It is tax season!
Brilliant post! I could not agree more about the mommy tax. Go for the dark chocolate. Your kids will hate it which leaves more for you. It’s not YOUR fault kids do not has discerning taste buds – yet.
I “know” Easter is supposed to be a religious holiday, but in our pagan household it was more about the basket of goodies than going to church.
Of course, in my quest to not have “too much candy” I ended up spending a bleeping fortune on non-candy things for the stupid basket. I probably should have just given them a ton of candy and paid for an extra cleaning at the dentist office. I swear it would have been cheaper.
LOVE your funny posts. They are always spot on.
You are so right about dark chocolate. I hated it like poison when I was a kid, but can’t get enough now.
And full of anti-oxidants, so eating dark chocolate is actually GOOD FOR YOU!
Take 100 cc’s of Hershey’s Special Dark and call me in the morning!
My favorite quote: “I had to use a camera with film, like a savage.”
Awesome!
The digital camera is one of the great advances for parents since the diaper.
Careful, the dark chocolate trick may backfire on you, and then you will have to share your dark chocolate stash with your oldest when she hits puberty! 🙂 All but my son love dark chocolate. They actually ask every afternoon for one Hershey Bliss from my secret mommy stash that is no longer secret!
Love, love, love digital photos, if only the grandparents would all join facebook and see them now! Happy empty tomb to your family Anne!
And to you as well, Dawn. Mom Trick–hide the stash where they will never look. I suggest the laundry room or in a bag in the mop bucket.
From a fellow savage…all of your points are spot on!
One downer for me is that both of my kids have always loved dark chocolate.
Robin, that is an amateur mistake. Tell kids dark chocolate tastes like coffee or Brussels sprouts.
Great advice, Ann. I love Hershey’s, but this time of year is all about See’s candy for me…well, it will be if I make it down there and actually buy Easter candy this year. I think we’ll have ham and pineapple pizza on Sunday. Setting expectations low is definitely the way to go.
Happy Easter.
See’s is harder to come by on my side of the country. I only get that when I fly out west. Luckily, they even sell it at some airports out there!
The ham and pineapple pizza is a clever twist! We are going to have a more traditional meal, because it’s a real treat to have a ham and fixin’s after two months of mostly-vegan.
“Take pictures” and get the “good chocolate” — I grinned and agreed.
Thanks, Anne.
Jennifer Dougan
http://www.jenniferdougan.com