In between, I continued the old egg-coloring tradition started with Mister and introduced Lamb to the whole idea. I had boiled the eggs on Saturday, so on Sunday morning after examining what the Easter Bunny left them in their baskets (with promise of a small sample after eating breakfast), and then the actual breakfast, I set up the egg-coloring child-labor production line. Empty yogurt cups, a little bit of vinegar and water, and the traditional tablets of fizzing food coloring. Some of the extras they put in the kit are useless. Display rings? Worthless. I let Lamb color on them to keep her busy as I set out dish clothes to absorb dye. Clear shrink-on things? OK, I saved them but they look way too much for what is supposed to be food in the end. Sure, the stickers are good and I divvied those up between Lamb and Mister. Not knowing how this would go with Lamb--and unsure of my ability to eat that many eggs--I kept the total to a dozen. Mister was gracious enough to voice only a formal objection to his getting 8 and Lamb getting 4 eggs.
Mister is all ready to go:
And Lamb eagerly awaited a new experience:
My major decision was how to deploy the dye cups. I had planned to bring them over one or two at a time as needed. That's how I did it with Mister when he was younger. But I had images of me spilling the dye in unneeded movement and also of turning my back on two children to make it to the kitchen and back. What if one was done and the other not and in the gap of my absence, one (well, Lamb, as the younger, is the logical worry here) reaches to the other cup and splashes it across the table and then cascades to the floor despite my best efforts to drape absorbent material all over the table?
So I put all the cups on the table and then hovered over the whole process, moving cups to children and away as needed. The production line was set:
Mister is an old pro and is even patient enough to soak the eggs for a deep color effect. He had no problem maneuvering the eggs and even avoided dropping and cracking even one egg--a problem in the past, I might add. His coloring was without mess:
His expertise left me free to hover just a little more over Lamb as she intently worked on her eggs:
I put them on the egg dipper (and good thing I save them from year to year since the kits have but one egg dipper!) and showed her how to stir and lift. She, being new to the whole thing, was eager to move on to the next egg after minimal soaking time.
This is where my plans nearly broke down. Mister noted that he had only a chance to color seven rather than eight eggs. I thought I'd kept Lamb to four and tried to point out the eggs each did. But darned it he wasn't right. Five for Lamb and Seven for Mister. I conceded defeat on this issue but Mister was inclined to take his victory over me and not dwell on the actual numbers. Especially since I could point out to Mister that he had more stickers than Lamb. Next year if I'm hosting both, I'll go for 18 eggs.
After letting the eggs dry (and explaining to Lamb why they weren't dry enough every five minutes), the kids added their stickers. I put them in the storage container, and then put them away.
And as a bonus, I actually managed to thoroughly boil the suckers this year! (I believe the method I used is technically called "coddling" the eggs) No runny yolks as I've started plowing through them in colorful lunches this week at work. With any luck, I'll get through them all this week before a decent respect for food-borne illnesses compel me to throw out the eggs.
And I really need to get some sleep this week.
