The stay-at-home dad: Extended egg hunt — now through forever!

I’m not here to tell the Easter bunny how to do their job. After this year’s egg hunt around the house, however, I have a few suggestions.

With my youngest child now 4 years old, the bunny isn’t leaving eggs out in plain sight anymore. That little furball went crazy hiding the eggs this year, finding holes and crevices in my house I didn’t think existed.

In previous years, the bunny left a mix of candy, Lego figures and even money in plastic eggs around the house and in our backyard. It was all candy this year, including little packs of Skittles.

Side comment: After so many references to Skittles in this column, I’m slightly disappointed that I haven’t been approached with a sponsorship deal, or, at the very least, some free product and/or “Taste the Rainbow” swag.

With so much well-hidden candy around the house, I worry an egg or two will go unfound, leaving the potential for attracting pests like ants or rodents. You might be thinking I shouldn’t worry about wrapped candy sealed in plastic eggs summoning the Rat King, but you didn’t live through the Wilson Family Mouse Infestation of 2017.

While the Easter bunny found all sorts of creative hiding places this year, my kids proved to be up to the task. Within minutes of waking up on Easter Sunday, I was stunned by how quickly they filled their buckets with plastic eggs.

My first thought: “Wow, these kids are smarter than I give them credit for.”

Second thought: “So they CAN spot random toys on the ground that shouldn’t be there and put them away.”

Third thought: “I’m going to slice my foot open when I step on one of those 100 plastic eggs.”

Just like every year, we told the kids to combine their egg piles, so as to minimize the complaints of who found the most (They still complained, obviously). This year, however, my kids wanted to do some math! They sorted the eggs by color and wrote down the totals:

Red: 18

Dark blue: 20

Yellow: 20

Green: 17

Light blue: 17

Orange: 20

Then came the analysis from my 10-year-old daughter:

“It looks like there’s supposed to be 20 eggs of each color, meaning we still need to find eight eggs.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say. “What makes you think there has to be exactly 20 eggs of each color?”

My daughter: “It just makes sense.”

If only the bunny would leave an answer key for the parents, just in case a few of these eggs go unfound. I’m not speaking in coded language here… please, Easter Bunny, please… If you’re going to hide the eggs that well, you gotta at least tell these tired parents where to direct the search the next morning.

After several days, the kids found five more eggs… three green and two red eggs, boosting their color totals to 20 each.

“See?” My daughter said in a snooty, self-satisfied tone. “20 of each color.”

To this day there remains three “missing” light blue eggs, and it’s beginning to wear on the psyche of my 10-year-old. The other three, while frustrated about it, console themselves with Skittles and baby size Twix. That gives me the opportunity to do my George Costanza impression, asking them, “And how many Twix is that for you today?! LIKE EIGHT TWIX!?”

I tried my best to give the Easter Bunny an out and shared a new theory about the missing eggs…

“What if the Easter Bunny was supposed to have 20 light blue eggs, like the other colors, but three plastic eggs broke in her basket on the way to our house?”

My daughter dismissed the theory immediately.

“That doesn’t make any sense, Dad,” she said. “We’re just going to need to keep looking.”

Me: “Well it’s easier to find Easter eggs in a clean house, so maybe you should pick up some other stuff and help clear the space…”

And with that statement, the Wilson Family Easter Egg Hunt of 2022 ended three light blue eggs short.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and stay-at-home dad to four kids, ages 4-10. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.