'Twas the Night Before Easter

Somebody (not naming any names, Beelzebub) was working overtime trying to keep us out of church on Easter Sunday, let me tell ya'.

It started two Sundays before when I put a perfectly healthy little girl in the nursery and was given a snotty mess ninety minutes later.

As a general rule, it's impolite to put your sick child in the nursery where he or she might get the other kids sick. Actually, it's downright rude. There's an unspoken code amongst church-going parents to keep the sick kids home...and give death glares to the moms that don't.

When I picked Evie up, the nursery worker called me out.

"We noticed she has a runny nose." Then, to soften the accusation..."Does she have allergies?"

Chris and I exchanged a panicked look.

"Um, yeah....allergies. She has terrible allergies this time of year. Right, honey?"

"Oh yes. Terrible."

The worker gave us a skeptical nod and we rushed out of church in shame. I vowed then and there to never put my kids back in the nursery if they had so much as a hangnail.

Two weeks later, Evie's nose was still runny. As it turns out, she was simply teething...but try explaining that to a hassled nursery worker without sounding like you're making feeble excuses.

I had the conversation all planned out...

"This is Evie. You may recall that she had a runny nose two weeks ago. We kept her out last week in case it was a cold and we wanted to be extra cautious. Well, she still has it but we're ninety percent sure it's because her molars are coming in and the occasional sneezing has more to do with her nasal passages being irritated than it does an actual transmittable virus....which, of course, would have worked its way through her system by now if that's what it was to begin with. Which it wasn't."

Another skeptical look.

"Uh-huh."

I shouldn't have worried because the nursery was so packed that morning I could have dropped off a barrel of bio-hazardous sludge in a summer dress and I doubt they would have noticed. If Evie weren't so exhausted, she might have been a little freaked out by the chaos.

You see, the night before Easter, my daughter decided to climb out of her crib for the first time.

Tell me, WHAT are the odds?! For the past twenty-seven months, that crib has effectively contained one very active little girl. And not for a lack of trying! I mean, the child can get out of her clothes and diaper in ten seconds. She can get out of her buckled high chair in less than that. Heck, she can toss her dinner plate on the floor and coat her hair with sweet peas faster than I can blink!

But a modest wooden rail has managed to hold her in for eight-hundred and twenty days (give or take).

That is, until I was taking a shower last Saturday night and Evie strolled in the bathroom, looking like she owned the place. I scrubbed the soap out of my eyes and slid open the shower door...

"Evie! What are you doing out of bed?!!"

She smiled up at me, completely clueless.

"You take a shower, Mommy?"

That was the first incident of the evening...after which, Evie learned that getting caught out of bed was a bad thing.

The second, third and fourth time involved walking by Evie's bedroom, noticing a light shining from beneath the door, and entering her room to find a panicking little girl trying desperately to climb back into the crib before she gets busted.

It wasn't until midnight (when Evie was finally asleep) that I realized I had no dress to wear for church the next day. Our church is pretty casual so I gleefully burned all of my skirts and pantyhose a week after we started going there. Of course, this puts me in a real pickle whenever I need to actually dress up...and Easter just seems like one of those occasions.

I wouldn't even have thought of it had Chris' sister, Sarai, not called me bragging about her new dress. She'd gotten it from Wal-mart of all places and was ecstatic about her find.

"You should go there too, Steph. They're open twenty-four hours!"

"I don't know, Sarai. Wal-mart?"

I'm no fashionista, but a place that sells groceries, electronics, and every other random thing under the sun doesn't seem like the ideal choice for dress shopping.

"Trust me, they have a new Natalie Maines collection that's fantastic."

"Natalie Maines?"

"Yeah, from the Dixie Chicks."

Chris pipes in from across the room...

"The stocky one with the big mouth."

"Oh."

So I decided to throw out my reservations and give Wal-mart a chance. Twenty minutes later I was standing in front of a single (tiny) clothing rack that held the entire Natalie Maines collection. I'm not even sure it qualified as a "collection" at all, unless this Natalie person has the attention span of an adolescent gnat. Half of it was shirts; the other half consisted of maybe three dresses to pick from, all with similar styles.

I grabbed one and snuck into the dressing room to try it on. One look in the mirror and I immediately called Chris.

"This isn't a dress. It's lingerie."

"Buy it!" Typical man.

"But I need something for church tomorrow!"

"Well, if you won't feel comfortable wearing it out, you might as well not get it."

I looked it over again and imagined every bad dream I've ever had about being in public and slowly realizing I'm naked.

"I'm putting it back."

So I went home empty handed and had to get up a few hours later for church. I decided on a pair of clean jeans and my nice boots....which turned out to be a blessing when I went to drop Evie off and saw that they had fifteen two-year-olds with only two workers.

Glad that my casual attire would come in handy, I volunteered my services in the nursery and ended up helping in Evie's class. The entire time, I was imagining myself squatting next to the kids in that dress/nightie.

Talk about a nightmare.

The class was so crazy (a craft with glitter for two-year olds? Really??!) that they ended up pulling out a veggie-tales video and stuffing the kids with crackers to keep them quiet. Which worked for all of three minutes.

I think I sprouted my first gray hair, but at least Chris got to enjoy the Easter service....


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