what month is it?

March---and April, come to think of it---has come and gone so quickly that every day I wake up in total disbelief of the calendar. Despite the fact that it's spring, it feels like the snowball effect: Easter......Tax Day....Anniversary...Birthday..BAM! Suddenly it's May 1st and I'm buried under a drift of emails, a camera full of photos, and a non-updated blog.

It will be impossible to recount all the day-to-day happenings so I won't even try. But let's touch on a few of the highlights:

Easter. We're completely secular when it comes to holidays, and Easter's no exception. I'm all about the pagan rites-of-spring spirit of the season, and I find the bunny-candy-eggcoloring-hiding ritual irresistible. So we invited our friends the Cochranes over for brunch (complete with mimosas, of course), "hid" eggs in the backyard for Sadie and Avery, and immortalized the event with the requisite Easter Bunny photo:

Now, we weren't entirely sure what Sadie's reaction to the ol' EB would be....fear? shyness? excitement? Well, I'm not sure there are words to sum up her reaction. Luckily there were no other kids waiting, because she sat on his lap no less than 15 times. Every time he (she? it?) would set her down, she'd grab his leg and try to climb back up, all the while signing "more" "more" "more". She invented some sort of game with the foil-wrapped chocolate eggs in the basket next to him: remove one, place in bunny's hand, take back, hand to mommy and/or daddy, take back, give to bunny, remove one from basket, etc. I'm fairly sure this could have continued all day if we didn't finally pay the highway-robbery-photo-rates and get the heck out of there. Needless to say, Sadie was disappointed but fulfilled. She even got a bite of chocolate egg.

On to the hunt. It was about 40 degrees and windy outside, so it was pretty short-lived. Also, Sadie had an unfair advantage over Avery, who was not yet walking. Note that she shared the loot, though!

Why all the egg-shaking? Well, just look at what wonderful treasures were inside:

Somehow I have a feeling Cheerios are NOT gonna cut it next year.

And in other big news:
We're still in the highly experimental stages of potty-training, involving mostly fun and games and sitting on the potty fully clothed. More on that as things develop. For now, I gotta get back to work (when else I am supposed to get this blog updated?).