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Monday, April 13, 2009

When Easter Goes Bad

I keep reading all of these wonderful Easter stories, full of family and happiness and well behaved children. Stories that would make Martha Stewart and Jesus proud.

But did anyone else have an Easter like mine?

It went down like this.

  • Gabi barrelled down the stairs and ripped her basket apart in less than five seconds, not taking any notice of all the toys I'd lovingly picked out for her over the last few months in her quest for chocolate.
  • Gabi noticed that there wasn't very much chocolate in her basket this year, and threw a fit.
  • I debated about telling her about the chocolate filled plastic eggs hidden throughout the living room because I didn't want to reward her behavior, but thought a fun hunt might cheer her up. Maybe she'd just woken up on the wrong side of the bed?
  • Gabi tore around the living room collecting eggs, and then plopped down on the floor and started stuffing chocolate into her mouth as fast as she could.
  • When the chocolate was cut off, she screamed and cried about how unfair we were and threw her new toys on the ground.
  • For the next several hours we kept finding her trying to get into her basket for more chocolate, which was in a time out on top of the fridge.
  • Each time we caught her, she threw a loud, screaming tantrum. Dragging a flailing, screaming child off a kitchen counter without anyone getting hurt is HARD.
  • After lunch, Gabi was allowed to have more chocolate. Why, I don't know, because she was soon running around the house in a sugar induced high, destroying it, and screaming every time I tried to get her to pick up after herself.
  • In the afternoon, she looked out the window and saw the neighbor girl dressed in a puffier Easter dress then hers. She spent the rest of the evening crying about her horrible, not as puffy dress.
  • In the bathtub she started sobbing about what a horrible Easter she'd had. She didn't get any chocolate, her dress wasn't puffy and her eggs hadn't even been hidden outside. How could I hide her eggs inside? HOW could I do that to her?
  • I'd had ENOUGH.
I dragged her out of the bath and wrapped her tightly in a towel so she couldn't squirm away while I retold her the reason why we celebrate Easter. How it's all about Jesus rising from the dead, and how that meant we could now be forgiven for the bad things we do. And how Easter baskets and chocolate and pretty dresses are just an extra bonus, things that we do because we are so happy to celebrate such a wonderful day.

I thought I'd gotten through to her because she calmed down, stopped crying and ended up being upset that Jesus had been watching her bad self all day.

But today, when we picked up the little boy we car pool for preschool with, and he asked her how her Easter was, she told him about how awful it was. So much for getting through to her. Thankfully he ignored her and launched into a story about his new Spiderman scooter.

I was so livid I was on the verge of banning Easter baskets from our house forever and never letting any type of candy into our house EVER AGAIN, EVER, when a thought struck me. Maybe Gabi's behavior wasn't based so much on her, but on God punishing me for not going to church on, like, only one of the most important days on the Christian calendar.

I know, I skipped Easter Sunday. I am not without shame. But I thought we'd just forgo one year of crowds and parking hassles and take it easy at home. Instead my child turned into the devil.

Message from God, or just a coincidence?

Next year I'll try Easter baskets AND church and see how it goes. If Gabi's still acting ungrateful and bratty, then I'll implement a basket and candy ban.

22 comments:

  1. How typical! Sounds like the Easters we had when mine were little. Lots of crabbiness from them and threats from me. lol.

    I'm pretty sure your experience has nothing to do with church, lol. You're a riot! ha ha ha

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  2. I think you should "hide" chocolate where only you can see it and then "find" it when you "catch her" being good.

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  3. I loved that there was a lesson. For the kiddos and us!
    We skipped out on service this Easter too. Can you say guilty??
    LOL

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  4. Sorry it didn't turn out too well...
    hope next year's is better
    so the bunny hop..hop, hop, hop :)

    BG

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  5. Oh no! I'm sorry it was fueled by chocolate and turned into disaster, lol!

    Although, I LOVE how you write and you always manage to have me cracking up!

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  6. Oh, I am SO SO SO SORRY. That's why we had our candy/hunt/whatnot on Saturday. Sunday was a quick easter basket and leftovers.

    On the Church side of the argument - it's three chocolate free hours! (In our church, it's also two hours where BBJ was in nursery. ;-)) Church wins every week for us! LOL

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  7. Oh dear Laural -

    Your baby LOVES her candy, and chocolate is the best candy of all.

    You have years of fun ahead as you try to control the candy intake.

    Just don't EVER cave and give it to her for breakfast before she heads out to school. I can't imagine the terror her teachers would have to deal with :)

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  8. Yikes! What a day! Next year try filling the plastic Easter eggs with coins!

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  9. Eh, ours wasn't perfect, either.

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  10. we definitely had to ban the eggs because bradley was becoming a maniac!! i seriously understand!

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  11. if it makes you feel any better we didn't go this year either. first year in my 31 years of life.

    i get it.

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  12. Sorry you had a day like that! Hopefully next year everything will go great and you won't have to ban baskets and candy, I don't know if I could live without the candy in the house!

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  13. I so didn't make church on Easter...oops.

    And we had a couple of Easter's like that too when I was growing up!! But as frustrated as I am sure you were, you have such a humorous what of retelling it ::)

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  14. Yikes! If it makes you feel better I did go to church and my day wasn't much of an improvement.

    But after reading about your day I am pretty happy with how my day was after all.

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  15. Our Easter was lame too... Bjørn was/is still in the hospital & I just couldn't get into the mood.... I miss American easters...
    Sorry your day sucked... hope it goes better next year!

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  16. That kinda sounds like one of my Easter's when I was that age. I was such a holy terror and if one little thing was out of place, oh Lordy...have mercy on whoever had to deal with me.

    But hey, here's the bright side...you survived Easter without any vomit. We spent ours, after my sister and her baby left, cleaning up volcanoes of vomit from a little girl who we think, it quite allergic to Jelly Beans.

    I think I would have taken an entire 24 hours of tantrums than all that vomit!

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  17. Sorry you had a rough Easter. Hopefully Gabby will enjoy it more next year and, more importantly, grasp the whole purpose of the celebration.

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  18. i would SO be banning baskets after that. you're lucky you made it through the day without being admitted or something, i probably would have freaked my freak LOL!

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  19. The screaming for no reason sounds like every day at my house.

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  20. So funny, it was so a message from God (or perhaps a sugar crash, you decide).

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  21. by the time I was 6 we had to watch the 10 commandments or the Easter story each year in order to celebrate Easter. I am sure my mother had the same thing happen, but with 5 of us. Did I mention my brother with full blown ADHD ate all of the Easter candy that was hid under her bed the Friday before Easter?
    Thankfully, you could beat your kids back in those days..

    (ok bad joke, I should have come in Anonymous!)

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  22. Reminds me of the Easters we had in England, tons of chocolate-filled eggs and English chocalate is delicious! Being Catholic we had fasted from chocolate for the 6 weeks of lent so it was pig-out time on easter Sunday! I hoarded my chocolates only to find my brother had found my stash and had bitten into each one, my parents just laughed and said I shouldn't have hidden it hoping to have it later

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