Oh man, Easter. What a weird holiday. I'm really terrible at it, too. Christmas, I've had kind of a slow start with but I think I get it now. I'm pretty sure the big kid has sorted out that I'm Santa Claus and the whole thing is a pleasant ruse she's happy to go along with. That's cool! We roll with that. Christmas mornings are pretty spot-on around here. This past year we added a new word to our private family lexicon, "Christmasface", which is the face that the baby made every time she opened a gift: eyes wide open, mouth hanging agape and staring in total disbelief at the glorious magnificence of a motherf*cking Christmas present!
But Easter has the whole bizarre Easter Bunny thing and I biffed it right out of the gate. I didn't even give the big kid a basket for the first couple of years and then when I finally did I was all "Here you go! A nice basket from me and your dad!" I have no idea why I suck at these things, I just do.
I'm also kind of perplexed about the scale of Easter gift giving for children. I remember always really wanting one of those store baskets-the big plastic ones wrapped in colored cellophane with off-brand "fashion dolls", plastic jewelry and presumeably tasteless chocolate rabbits inside. I know my folks did up baskets for us that were great (I think they were mostly, if not entirely, candy) and one year we got a kitten (!!) that we named Bunny. Poor Bunny was kind of psychotic.
I don't like giving my kids a bunch of sugar (especially chocolate) because it makes them go crazy, but I don't want to give them plush toys because they have so many, or little plastic doo dads because they end up all over the house and pretty rapidly in the trash can. I had this belief for a long while that if I bought my kids the expensive natural toys they would love and cherish them, but all day long they're alternately peacefully playing with or fighting over Polly Pockets. They really love the Disney Princess ones.
So I'm thinking Easter is...one middling sort of toy? And a chocolate rabbit? A Cadbury egg because those are such a weirdly compelling seasonal horror? That seems pretty sound. A butterfly garden would have been ideal, but I forgot about it and the larvae won't get here in time, and a butterfly habitat with no larvae seems like it might be kind of a bummer.
Like I said, I have no idea why this is so confusing to me. I suppose it's as simple as not wanting to overload my kids, whether it's with toys or sugar or television or whatever. There's a sweet spot with all special, treat-like things, maybe different for every kid, and I feel sad and distressed when we cross the line into too much. Everything just gets really ugly.
Speaking of things that some people find ugly:
Have you guys heard of Blythe dolls? There's a little more history here but the gist is that Kenner manufactured these big headed, huge-eyed dolls in 1972 that terrified little girls so they stopped making them. Almost three decades later they caught on in Japan with young women and have been manufactured again as collectible fashion dolls for adults. It's this whole huge thing. I had no idea about it until I met Ruth, the woman behind Eurotrash, a clothing line for Blythe dolls. Whether or not you're into the whole collectible thing, her work is gorgeous. And apparently it's a huge passion for some people. There are conventions and everything.
Anyway, I was checking out Ruth's site a couple of years back and big kid caught sight of the dolls. She completely blissed out on them. I spent a long time trying to explain that they're not dolls for little girls; they're extremely expensive, with the new models selling for hundreds of dollars and the original Kenner dolls going for thousands. She's actually exposed to virtually no toy advertising, and chooses how she wants to spend her pocket money based on what's for sale in the toy shop downtown, but Blythe dolls have become pretty visible in the handmade world, to the point that Simplicity has put out some patterns for Blythe clothing. The big kid likes to look through pattern books with me when I go to the fabric store, so the whole Blythe thing comes up now and again...and I have to explain, every time, that they're not like a Barbie. They're expensive; they're for grown-ups. And she's disappointed, every time.
Then lo and behold, we were in the toy aisles of a department store and what did we see?
Blythe.
A little, tiny, she-can-buy-one-with-her-pocket-money Blythe.
Hasbro, which owns Blythe in a post-Kenner world, has linked the dolls up to their Littlest Pet Shop line which, for the record, I hate with the burning passion of a thousand suns. They are brightly colored little plastic bobble-headed "animals" and I think they are weird and creepy. My kids have inherited a bunch and received them as gifts and they like them. Not as much as the Polly that you put in your pocket, but they're definitely played with.
Ostheimer, not so much. We tried.
I guess Blythe dolls have stopped being terrifying? Maybe nothing will be terrifying after Bratz? There's the whole Monster High thing, so I don't know. Kids are different. Frankly I think Blythe looks downright conventional now.
After seeing the dolls and trying to determine whether their eyes opened and closed (they don't) we had another long discussion about the bigger Blythe dolls and exactly how expensive they are. We also discussed their eyes, which do a crazy thing that I needed YouTube to help me explain:
I thought this video was hilarious, but when I turned to look at my daughter she had this look of pure love on her face. We talked about the eye thing and I said something again about them being so expensive. She nodded and said, very quietly, "Oh...oh yes of course. I can see why that would be."
Of course.
I got the girls each one of the little dolls for their Easter baskets, along with the chocolate rabbit and the sugar goop egg. Spring treats that are, hopefully, not too much. And we'll settle into a nice, long five month run of no occasions that involve new toys (those occasions feel very clustered up for our family). Whew.
Somehow I don't think I'm going to be able to go five months without being subjected to Blythe Theater.