Pretty Eggs, Frazzled Mama

If I had a leisurely afternoon to creatively decorate and dye Easter eggs I might really enjoy the process. But as it is, my children wanted to dye the eggs, and I just wanted to die.

OK, it wasn't quite that bad, but at the ages of six, five, and three the girls needed a bit of help with a few of the details like: boiling two dozen eggs, covering the table with waxed paper, finding suitable paint clothes, mixing up permanent dyes, getting the eggs in and out of the dyes, shrinking decals onto the eggs in boiling water, and putting "tattoos" on their eggs. Who knew these kits would come with egg "tattoos?" Strangely enough the girls didn't seem to grasp that you have to press hard enough to get the tattoo to rub off onto the egg, but not so hard as to crack the shell.

"Mama, would you put this one in the blue color for me?" Hannah asks, just as Naomi cries,"Oh no, Mommy, I dropped this one on the floor!" Emma calls impatiently, "Mah-ee, I nee el wih thih ah-er! Ih nah er-eene!" ("Mommy, I need help with this flower (tattoo)! It's not working!")

And I answer something like, "Sure, Hannah. Naomi, here, let's shrink wrap that egg with this pretty design and no one will notice the cracks. I'm coming, Emma, let me rub that for you." And then I stand on my head and balance eggs on both feet in the air, just because I'm awesome...not really.

At least Naomi and Hannah could handle the "magic crayon" that puts clear wax on the egg so that the dye won't stick to your design, and then your design "magically" appears in white when you dye the egg. I gave the crayon to Emma and told her to try it. A few minutes later she handed the egg to me for dyeing. "Oh, did you make a pretty design?" I asked her. "Yeah," she said, "but it didn't show up." She really giggled when I pulled her egg out of the dye and showed her that her design did in fact show on the egg.

 

  

Amazingly, before Toby woke from his nap, we had a cleaned-up kitchen, and a pretty basket of eggs. I hope the girls made happy memories because egg dyeing might not come around again for a couple of years.