Easter

When I was a kid, there were only two mythical creatures who snuck into my house and left stuff for me when I wasn't looking---Santa and the tooth fairy. That was it. I think some other kids talked about the Easter Bunny coming to their house, but not me. My parents could barely muster up enough energy to handle Santa.

Now it seems like kids get visitors for every holiday. A few weeks ago, just after St. Patrick's Day, Ellie came into our bedroom and asked us why a leprechaun didn't come to our house and leave us chocolate coins like he did at her friend's house.

I've never had the Easter Bunny visit our house before, but we had friends over on Saturday night and they were whispering about how they were going to do it and I remembered Ellie's disappointment that a leprechaun didn't pick the lock on our front door and run through our house leaving gold-wrapped chocolate everywhere, so I decided to do it. Around midnight I ran over to Dominick's and bought some plastic eggs and hid them around the house.

Ellie was quite happy when she woke up and got to search the house for eggs. But I'm still bitter about it. Do we really need to do a Santa thing for every holiday? I cannot possibly figure out which holidays are supposed to bring visitors and which holidays aren't, so I've decided to assign a creature for every holiday. On Labor Day, Walter the Worker will come and hide hammers, wrenches and screwdrivers throughout the house (be careful where you sit!). Memorial Day will bring Sammy the Soldier to our house to wake her up with a 21-gun salute. And on the Fourth of July, the corpse of Thomas Jefferson will lovingly place a copy of the U.S. Constitution under her pillow. I have no idea what I'll do for Casimir Pulaski day, so I'll just leave it at that.

My other option is to blow everything and tell Ellie that no one comes to the house. Ever. We lock our doors and windows every night because we prefer not to have any nocturnal visitors. There is no Santa or Easter Bunny or leprechauns or anything else--it's all us. We're all the magic she's ever going to get.

Or I'll just blog about it.