Pastoral

Under threat of canceling the sleepover she has planned for tomorrow night, Penny has been almost supernaturally good during the last few days. I'm not even kidding: she picked up her brother's toys last night. Without even being asked to do so.

I took her shopping yesterday for an Easter outfit. She'd told me in no uncertain terms that she did not want a fancy dress for Easter. What she wanted precisely was to wear a skirt or a skort with a "cute shirt with a chick or a bunny".

Silly me, I thought that might be doable. I'd forgotten that she is no longer wearing toddler clothes, and that in big kid departments, there aren't really any holiday-specific tees outside of Christmas and Hallowe'en. So we wandered listlessly around the Kohl's. I tried to interest her in a shirt with pretty butterflies or ruffles on them, but no dice. At least she wasn't being whiney. (Cf above: supernaturally good.)

Suddenly, she turned around and said, "MOM! O. M. G!"

She really did say the letters O-M-G like that. I don't know which of her friends taught her that, but I'd like to strangle them.

"Mom! This is beautiful!" She held up a pretty yellow dress, pleated and decorated with sparkles.

"I thought you didn't want a fancy dress," I said.

"This isn't fancy," she said.

... Who am I to argue? We picked several dresses off the not-fancy (but totally fancy) dress rack and went into the dressing room to try them on. The yellow dress was not very flattering to either her color or her figure and the green dress was gorgeous but had a scratchy crinoline. But the turquoise dress! Comfortable and sparkly and pretty and flattering. We even found  a sweater-shrug for her to wear over top of it in case it's chilly, and it's white, so she can use it with any of her other sleeveless dresses, too.

I didn't buy her the shirt with the attached necklace that she was excited about, and she didn't beg or whine. Supernaturally. Good.

So she's all set for Easter clothes, yay! And so is Alex, because I'd bought him a button-down shirt with lighter blues and yellows a couple of weeks ago, and I set it aside earlier this week when he tried to pick it to wear. (Alex loves button-down shirts. It's adorable. Now if I could just convince him that button-downs should be worn with khakis or jeans instead of with sweatpants, he'd be set to go.)

Tomorrow, Penny's got that sleepover, after which she can (and probably will) stop being so good. Saturday, of course, we'll need to dye and decorate eggs. (I got a dozen for each kid. I'm going to be eating an ass-ton of hardboiled eggs over the next few weeks.) And I'll be baking, too, because Sunday's dessert is pretty much in my hands. (I'm waffling between lemon chess pie, which is my traditional Easter dessert, or ice cream and berries, which would be easy.) And then, of course, Sunday is Chocolate Bunny day -- there will be baskets to fill, eggs to hide and hunt, and a late lunch/early dinner at my parents'.

The weather for the next few days looks delightful and spring-like -- sunny and warm without being hot.

Perfect.

I hope you all have a perfect weekend, too.