Easter Dad-ness

Until this year, Christmas and Easter and Birthdays with the boys have been for Diana and my benefit. Kids under 4 don’t really understand the magic of religion and its brother, present getting. But this year Elijah was all jacked up about eggs and plastic grass and JELLY BEANS! Oh, and the icon of Christianity.

I arrived back from a quick trip to Whole Foods to discover that Diana and Eli had already colored the eggs I spend the majority of the day preparing (According to the internet, you need boiling water and eggs). I whined and stomped for a while and demanded I be in attendance for any and all Easter related cuteness from now on.

The next morning I awoke from a coveted sleep in to find the Easter baskets demolished. My blood boiled at the idea of me not being in attendance, but I thought about what Jesus would do if his kids and wife never listened to him. It brought up too many theological questions, so I just shoved a fist full of jelly beans in my mouth.

Eli embarked on a day long jelly bean binge. Luca, on the other hand, couldn’t quite decide if he liked them. He’d toddle up every five minutes shouting, “Bean! Bean!” But after two or three chews, he’d spit it out onto the floor. I spent a lot of the day picking chewed beans out of my toes.

Eventually, we packed up the boys and went to another Easter Egg hunt. This one at our friends The Goodriches neighbor’s house. He was a preacher of some unknown denomination. I geared up for some good old fashioned religion. But like the Denver church that sponsored our last egg hunt, he never mentioned JC once. In fact, had I not known he was a cloth man, I would’ve thought he was just a dude. I wondered if this still counted as going to church. I decided yes.

Anyhoo, after an hour or so of trying to prevent Luca from eating peanut butter snacks, I was summoned to the front yard. The Dads were in charge of hiding the eggs.

This was my first real dad bonding experience. Most of my pals who are dads were my pals way before they were dads. So we have way more in common than poopy d’s. Well, mostly Star Wars in common. But this was my first time seeing a bunch of dads from vastly different backgrounds thrown together in Dad-ness.

It was pretty great. We swore. We spit. We hid eggs in dangerous places like car exhausts and rose bushes and on top of the house. We pretended we didn’t want our son to get the most eggs.

The mayhem of egg finding ensued and we dads went back to the shelter of our wives.