Happy Easter and Sleep

Lana has slept with Gabriel for the past three nights and significantly more amounts of sleep have been had in our house.

Lana's first Easter was impressive to her. I believe I have mentioned before that she is a candy fiend, so, any event that brings her MORE CANDY is really tops with her. She has picked up the words, "Wow" and "Awesome" from her pre-school pals. She repeated them constantly over the weekend. I am certain that, despite our Wednesday night Lenten workshops at church, she doesn't have a grasp, conceptually, of Easter, but, she certainly loves the candy that comes with it.

On Saturday morning, she and Gabriel attended an Easter Egg hunt at my mom's church (i.e. the church where my mother is one of 5 clergy persons.) She LOVED this. She wouldn't leave Gabriel's side and he helped her find her 12 eggs while he found his 12 eggs.

From there, we went to my mom's house for egg dying and lunch. Lana really enjoyed coloring the easter eggs, and then she and Gabe and their cousin T~ had another impromptu Easter Egg hunt around my mom's house. They were using plastic eggs, but, my brother and I remembered (and laughed about) the year that our parents hid real eggs around the house, and then 2 of them could not be found, and didn't show up until about 8 weeks later. With a horrific smell. Probably our parents didn't laugh about it AT THE TIME, but, it was funny in retrospect.

We drove up to my in-laws house in Michigan late Saturday afternoon. Saturday night, Lana and Gabriel slept in my in-laws guestroom on a futon couch. (You know, the kind that folds down into a bed? Incidentally, these "futon couches" bear very little resemblance to the futons that Husband and I slept on the year that we lived in Japan...)

Anyway, Lana and Gabe slept fairly well, with Lana only waking up once to go to the bathroom around 4:00 AM, and she went right back to sleep. At 8:00 AM, Gabriel came into the room where Husband and I were sleeping and said, "Lana's not in bed."

"What do you mean, Lana's not in bed?" I asked. (I was dead asleep, which is the only explanation I can give for such a stupid question.)

"I mean, she's not there." Gabe said.

I got up and went out into the living room and kitchen, to see if she was with my in-laws. The house was dark and quiet - my in-laws had already left for 8:00 mass. I checked both bathrooms, and Lana was not in either of them. I went back into the guest room, and looked UNDER the futon couch. There was Lana, sleeping peacefully, under the futon. Since she has been so sleep deprived lately, I didn't want to risk waking her up by moving her, so, I left her there. She slept under there for another hour. (Does this make me the world's most horrible mother?)

We missed going to church, but, since my in-laws church does not have a children's chapel during service, and while I thought I would feel horrible about that, I really don't feel too bad about it. I was not looking forward to trying to get Gabe and Lana to sit still for an hour in a packed sanctuary.

We had a wonderful meal with Husband's extended family - ham, pototoes, perogi, kielbasa and other polish specialties. Everyone ate too much. This was Lana' first experience eating baked ham (at least in the US) and she LOVED IT. She was less impressed with perogi and kielbasa.

I will try to post some pictures later today.

LM