We did not know how our son would respond to finding the eggs, he was twenty months old and quite adept at using signs in combination with his small vocabulary. The eggs were hidden in our very tiny yard in Texas, mostly in plain sight. He was a little confused at first but with a little coaxing he anxiously began looking and finding eggs all over the yard. He quickly filled the Easter basket with the eggs. However, he had not yet discovered that some of the eggs contained chocolate. I handed him a plastic egg and he gave me a confused look. Once I popped the egg open and showed him that it held a piece of chocolate, he shoved the chocolate into his mouth and reached for another egg. He was very excited to check every egg for chocolate. We let him have a few pieces of chocolate but put the rest of the chocolate filled eggs up for later. In the next few days that followed Easter, our son asked for chocolate continuously until it was gone, but the plastic eggs supplied hours of fun for over a week (until the plastic eggs were all broken and thrown away).
This Easter we continued our tradition with our son by dying eggs with natural dyes (tumeric, beets, red onions, and blueberries). He did not seem too interested in the process this year because he was having too much fun playing with his aunts! We continued our Easter egg hunt tradition with chocolate filled eggs and our dyed Easter eggs after Easter Mass and breakfast. This year I hid the eggs in the his (and his sister’s bedroom). Our son knew just what to do. He immediately started searching for eggs and depositing them into the Easter basket. He also knew that the eggs contained chocolate and he only collected the plastic eggs completely ignoring the dyed ones. Within minutes he was sitting on the floor with a plastic egg filled with m&m’s shoving them into his mouth as fast as he could. Our Easter traditions have continued but I also anticipate adding to them especially with two toddlers next year!