Easter 2017 was a little rough for us. Maya had had a virus earlier in the year that had wreaked havoc on her intestinal tract (her doctor called it a “gastric insult”), and in an effort to help her damaged gut recover, we were avoiding sugar and dairy. The Easter bunny wasn’t allowed to bring any candy to our house.

We don’t wind up taking too many family photos.

Luckily, there were all sorts of things that stood in. Sean assembled Easter baskets full of non-edible goodies. Sean and the kids dyed eggs and left them out for the Easter bunny to hide. These were augmented with sea creature shaped plastic eggs filled with temporary tattoos from Lolli and Pop.

Cracking the cascarones on Daddy’s head!

And we also had cascarones. Sean picked a dozen pre-made ones up from HEB, our local grocery store. They are painted up all pretty like our hard-boiled ones, but the eggs themselves have been drained out, the shells dried, and then the remaining shells loaded with confetti. The kids LOVED them. They had a lot of fun whacking them over our heads, throwing the confetti around, making a mess of mom and dad. If memory serves (and honestly, who knows if it really does), this was Maya and Ian’s favorite part of the front yard egg hunt.

Maya could barely hang on to her kite!

We had one really great weekend where we took the kids kite flying at Zilker Park. Weather wise, and kite flying wise, things couldn’t have been more perfect. Maya in particular had a lot of fun flying her swank new Finding Dory kite. We ran into trouble on the potty front. Ian let me know that he needed to go, so I hauled him over to the porta-potties. He took one look at what he’d have to sit on (and more importantly, what lurked beneath) and promptly let me know that he didn’t have to go after all. So instead, I hoofed him all the way back to our parked car, where we were still smart enough to have the little potty seat. One time would have been fine, but he was still finding his footing on the toilet training front at the time, so I don’t know how many trips I made to take him to the bathroom in the back of the Prius. I missed most of the kite flying.

Mother’s Day!

I don’t recall us marking mother’s day or father’s day with much fanfare, but I do remember haranguing Sean into taking a photo with me and the kids. For both events, the kids had little breakfasts for us at their school where we were presented with little gifts from them. For mother’s day, they both brought home sprouted seeds, which we of course added to our backyard garden.

Guys, I’m on stage!!!

Maya had decided to try out dance class at her school starting in January. The focus of the company is on ballet and tap, and they come to the kids’ school to provide the lessons. In May they had a recital. If you had told me when I first got pregnant that my daughter would one day be wearing a pink leotard and tutu, I wouldn’t have believed you. But, over the course of parenthood, I’ve developed the habit of trying my best to let them be whoever they want to be. If that means a pink tutu, so be it.

While Maya seemed to enjoy her class and recital, she decided to try gymnastics instead this fall. About a month in, she said she wanted to go back to dance, so who knows. Four year olds are fickle.