After Today, No Eggs Please

Easter might possibly be the official day of our daughter's allergy. The original Easter egg hunts were done with painted chicken eggs. She is allergic to raw egg and I am not sure that boiling them changes the chemistry sufficiently to avoid a reaction. Of course the modern twist on tradition is to use chocolate eggs. In theory that would be okay but only a minority of chocolate is manufactured in peanut-free facilities and even then we have the Cadbury mini-egg recall. The combination of these allergies makes an Easter Egg hunt a challenge.

This week I began to teach our daughter to say 'No Eggs Please' whenever she sees an egg. I am also teaching her to say 'No Peanuts Please' whenever somebody offers her food of any kind. She is getting the hang of it and we hope it will be one more defense against anaphylaxis.

Today the learning was interrupted. On the heels of learning to say 'No Eggs Please' whenever she sees an egg, today she awoke to coloured plastic eggs being hidden around the house for her first Easter Egg hunt. I know that is probably confusing to her but it had to be done. The annual Easter Egg hunt was one of the highlights each year in our family and it is a tradition I want to pass on.

Our daugher is into games, so the hunt was a huge hit. The fact that the eggs are not edible is irrelevant - I'm sure she had just as much fun as she would have if the eggs were chocolate. Of course, the irony is that the gummy candies we put inside were peanut free, but they have carnauba wax which can occasionally cause issues with eczema. Next year we'll hide plastic eggs that have toys inside - the whole 'food thing' is just too challenging sometimes!

We had great fun this morning ... our daughter was running around saying ... 'Hey Bunny! Where'd you put the eggs, Bunny?'.

Tomorrow we'll revert back to 'No Eggs Please'.