This afternoon, my sons and I dyed Easter eggs. I broke down and got a store-bought kit because I was sucked in by the idea of making sparkly eggs. I imagined pastel orbs twinkling with glitter, similar to the ones I made with my grandma a few decades ago.

I remember wearing one of her embroidered aprons, mixing vinegar and water in a little glass cup, and dropping the colorful pellets into the liquid. Both my grandma and I are somewhat artistic, so we created intricate designs with white crayons before dunking them in the dye. Once they were dry, we displayed them in eggcups as part of the Easter brunch centerpiece.

Dying eggs with my sons was quite different.

They had little interest in making designs on the eggs with the white crayon even though I tried to pitch it as a "magic crayon." Kai made a few scribbles on one, but then proceeded with what he really wanted to do: dunk the egg in every color until it was a loamy brown. Levi had no interest in the eggs whatsoever; instead he dropped a quarter and a Transformer's arm into the dyes. (I didn't notice the little plastic arm until dumping the dye down the drain.)

In the end, their fingers and other miscellaneous body parts were stained with blue and red and purple streaks. Also, glitter was all over my kitchen but somehow very little made it onto the shells, and they destroyed the box that the dye kit came in which doubles as a display unit for the finished eggs. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, I don't own a single egg cup.

I looked at our sad pile of poopy brown eggs and mentally compared them to the beautiful orbs Gram and I made long ago. Luckily, I've become pretty good at not getting super anal about aesthetics when the boys are involved. I really try to back burner my Type A stuff and revel in the Type B-ness that's often required in child rearing.

So, I placed the eggs in a pretty blue bowl from Guatemala and set them in the center of the kitchen table next to a vase full of lilies.

Happy Easter.