Baby Book Club, slacker edition.

I’m not gonna lie. I sort of half-assed book club this week.

Yesterday afternoon I suddenly realized that oh crap, I’ve got 4 people coming tomorrow and I have absolutely nothing planned. All I have is the vague desire to do something springish or Eastery, and I know I want to find a book aimed at a slightly younger crowd than last week’s? Usually I try to get all that figured out by the weekend at least, but this past Sunday I somehow tweaked my back at boot camp (like an idiot) and ended up spending the rest of Sunday flat on my back. Luckily, by Monday afternoon I was feeling totally fine again, and so I was able to think beyond “Ok, if I change things up and move to the couch, where will I plug in the heating pad?”

In any case. Last night I found myself browsing the bookstore, iced Caramel Macchiato in hand, looking for a book that was not only interesting and fit my springy/eastery criteria, but that would easily inspire a craft/activity/snack to go along with it. I picked up and put back down a number of selections, and was eventually drawn to a little hardcover entitled Piggy Bunny. I quickly leafed through it, and thought it was charming and adorable and dude, it mentioned salad, so a veggie tray could be the snack. Done.

Piggy Bunny, by Rachel Vail, tells the tale of a little pig who wants to be a bunny. Not just any bunny, though. The Easter Bunny. Everyone in his family tells him that um, he’s a pig, quite a nice pig in fact, and they do love him so, but could he just drop this Easter Bunny business please? Because it’s ridiculous. He tries to learn to hop, and forces himself to eat salad, and attempts to deliver eggs, but still nobody can see him as anything more than a pig. Finally his grandma (and the internet) help him acquire an Easter Bunny suit, and ultimately achieve his dream. Cute story. Cute illustrations.

Cute bunny-ears-on-a-headband craft. Easy salad snack. (Bonus points for getting bunny-shaped gummies and bunny-shaped grahams and bunny-shaped crackers and pretzels and thank you Annie’s for making so many of your snack foods bunny-shaped.) Some sort of loosely egg-related activity? (“Hey, guys! Put on your bunny ears and hop around the living room. Here are some buckets and some eggs! Hide them or find them or hop in and out of this hula hoop or whatever! There are stickers and gummies in the eggs, so uhhhhh unstructured loosely-easter-bunny-related playtime!”)  The hard thing about planning activities for this age group is that it’s tough to know how much direction they will want to take at any given moment. The good part is- they’re really easily amused.

I also did not take more than a handful of pictures today. Sorry guys. This was bound to happen eventually. I can’t be brilliant all the time.

The good news is- I think I’ve already chosen next week’s book. So, I’ve got plenty of time to waste come up with the specifics.

Plus, in totally unrelated events, I am totally on top of the girls Easter outfits and it’s only the Tuesday of Holy Week. We even got shoes for everyone today! With no tantrums! Huzzah!