Our daughter was 11 months old when she celebrated her first Easter. I don't remember it well, but I can be certain there was a dress, a family get-together and an Easter basket.
At that age, candy wasn't in it, but I can tell you what was laying in the plastic green grass -- a small brown stuffed Easter bunny with big ears and a ribbon around its neck and a rubber duck.
Our daughter is 13 now, so you might wonder why I remember so clearly what was in her Easter basket when she wasn't even a year old. I remember because -- and I'm not saying it's right -- the Easter bunny at our house gave her those same two things every year for probably five or six years. And I don't mean new bunnies and new rubber ducks. Nope, I mean the exact same ones.
This is what our Easter bunny did for years and years without the children being any wiser. Every year the basket would contain a few age-appropriate things -- maybe bubbles, sidewalk chalk, a jump rope, new crayons, candy. It also would include the stuffed bunny and the rubber duck, which were convenient basket fillers that somehow disappeared every year like clockwork right around May 1, only to return again next year, happy and chipper in the basket.
I remember when we hit about year six and I was sure the deal was up. One of these times she was going to point out that she was getting the same dang stuffed rabbit every single year or at least that it looked familiar.
Never happened. I don't know if she never truly figured it out, or if she was just being polite. Who knows?
Around year seven, our Easter bunny just couldn't do it anymore and besides, the two standards seemed a little babyish. It was time to move on.
They remain in the bunny's box of tricks, though, ready and waiting to take another stab at it. Maybe this is the year?
