Epic Easter Fail

So, today was perfectly awful. I had a feeling it might go that way, and I was not disappointed.

I completely dropped the ball on Easter this year. I actually forgot about it entirely until I was looking at the month trying to find days for B to go to the Baby Kennel, only to discover they were closed today. So there will be no cute mall Easter Bunny shots, no pics of B & T in adorable Easter outfits, no cupcakes with green dyed coconut flakes on top, no home made egg hunts. This will be the Easter that never was. 

I did at least have the wherewithal to look up neighborhood egg hunts and found a large community one at a park downtown. I invited a friend but she demurred saying it would probably be a zoo. Oh my God, was she right!

I queued up twenty minutes early...only to be stuck waiting nearly an hour as they were late letting people in and there was an absolute mob of people waiting already. I should have left then. I hadn't factored in the fact that once I let B out of the stroller it would be impossible to get him back in, that the place would be so packed and chaotic that having him run free would be an exercise in utter heart stopping panic as he disappeared into the crowd, and that all the attractions - bouncy house, egg hunt - were set up for a crowd about one one hundredth of the size of this one, resulting in hours' long waits for everything. It was just awful.

I waited forever for the egg hunt - only to discover as we got to the front of the serpentine line that it was a disorganized mess with everyone pushing in front, nowhere to put my stroller, and no way to hear the one guy trying to corral people over the racket of wailing children, a shitty over-amped Christian rock band, and randomly popping balloons. So I said the hell with it and went to see if there was anything else we could do - but all the open spaces were super hazardous (fountains, etc), Bumpus didn't understand why he couldn't push in front of hundreds of people to climb into the bouncy house, and I was starting to worry about the baby who had been strapped to me under the hot sun all this time and hadn't moved once. 

Finally I decided to cut my losses and just leave - which of course resulted in a massive meltdown from you know who. Then all I could do was drive around aimlessly with the a/c blasting and two children screaming their heads off in the back seat. Good times.

Somehow got B to eat a good dinner and get into bed - after lots of hugs and apologies from me about how not fun the day was despite my promises to the contrary, with intermittent tantrums on his part every time I attempted to get him to do something he didn't want to do (which was pretty much everything).

The good thing is, Bumpus doesn't know he missed out on anything today, and will never remember this. Someday he'll know things like me skipping out of the egg hunt after all that waiting just because it was stressing me out, and the fact that he didn't get a balloon while everyone else did, and there was ice cream there that I didn't get for him because I was pissed off and couldn't be buggered. Those days are coming soon. 

But really...have I ever had a fun Easter? For a while I went to that rockabilly event in Vegas over Easter weekend, which was kind of fun, but always marred by single girl problems - getting in a huge fight with a girlfriend who went after a guy I was interested in and never talking to her again; being there days after my failed first IUI and feeling very lonely and shiftless. And other than that, having no faith to make the day meaningful and no children to enjoy, it's mostly been kind of pointless.

As with all parenting fails, all I can do is shrug my shoulders and promise to do better next time. Next Easter I won't just have had a baby. And B will be old enough to know what's going on, so I can have a blast hitting up the dollar store for Easter basket stuff and surprising them with it, maybe even doing a little egg hunt in my sloping front yard. And making those coconut cupcakes.

If the true meaning of this holiday is resurrection and redemption, then surely I can get a re-do next year. That's the great thing about kids - it's never too late to make it up to them.