Day 27: Hard Boiled Eggs

Ever since Lily was a baby, we’ve made Easter eggs every year. We have a humongous collection at this point. Dozens of blown out eggs, decorated in a rainbow of dyes and paints, glitter, and stickers. This year was the first year that Lily and I colored hard boiled eggs, instead of the labor-intensive blown eggs.

And Lily was not. happy. about. it.

Luckily she was so excited to get to dye anything that she only protested a tiny bit about using the hard boiled eggs. Within a few minutes she was happily writing on the shells with clear crayon, wrapping eggs in rubber bands, and dipping each one in a rainbow of colors.

We set the eggs to dry, and later put them in the refrigerator to keep. It wasn’t until hours later, at dinner, that we remembered about them.

I thought it would be fun the kids to each have an egg to eat — after all they had never eaten decorated eggs before. I let them each choose one.

Jackson busted his open first, with a little help, and was happy to peel all the little purple pieces of shell away from the egg.

Lily on the other hand, could barely bring her self to put a crack in her beautifully decorated green egg. Even though she had chosen the one that was, in her words, “the least special,” she could hardly stand to see it go.

Once she had the egg out, she begged to save the shells. “Please!” she cried. “I’ll keep them with my Easter basket so I can always remember these eggs!”

No matter how hard I tried to explain that the eggs we were eating were just like regular hard boiled eggs, only more fun, she just couldn’t let it go. It didn’t matter that we put regular egg shells in the compost all the time–these weren’t regular eggs. These were Easter Eggs.

In the end, I agreed to let her keep one small piece from her egg, and Jackson’s egg. Tiny little mementos to add to her collection.