Last year, despite our purchasing numerous colorfully-wrapped chocolate Easter eggs at Comptoirs de France, we failed to find an egg that had a ticket inside to the bakery’s annual Easter Egg Hunt.

Overdosed on chocolate and feeling a bit like the main character in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we eventually gave up trying to find one and settled on a play date with one of Reina’s friends instead – she never even noticed that we skipped egg hunting. However, when we got the opportunity to attend this year’s egg hunt on behalf of beijingkids, we decided to go for it.

So on Sunday, we awoke early, flagged a cab, and headed to Comptoirs de France’s East Lake Villas branch for the annual Easter Egg Hunt. Along the way, we learned that traffic is light on a Sunday morning, so we actually ended up arriving before the 9am registration time.

Inside the bakery, educators from neighboring Ivy Academy had set up activity stations for making paper flowers, rabbit ear hats, beaded crafts, coloring pages, and more.

While waiting for the egg hunt to start, we of course sampled some of the bakery’s delicious pain au chocolate and vanilla tea. By 10am, the place was packed with children and parents getting ready for the day’s big event and the two bunny mascots were getting practically knocked over by enthusiastic kids.

The children were divided into two categories: ages 2-6 and 7-12. The gardens in the middle of the East Lake Villas compound were peppered with chocolate Easter eggs. Each group had their own section of the garden to scour; bakery staff had been busy hiding the eggs and didn’t make it too easy on the little kids, so I imagine the big kids had to work hard to find the ones in their section.

The kids quickly fanned out through the gardens, and within a few minutes, every egg had been discovered. Shortly thereafter, most had also been broken open to see what prizes were inside. Alas, although Reina found several eggs, she did not win a prize, but she felt satisfied to simply have the colorful foil wrappers and pawned the actual chocolate onto us.

Melanie Caruso, the marketing manager for Comptoirs de France, told me that last year’s event attracted nearly 200 participants and this year looked like it could easily have matched that number.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with egg hunts, not every child found an egg, but it did seem like most had a good time – no matter what their egg count was.

All photos by Christopher Lay

One of the great joys of pregnancy is sharing the details of the changes going on in our unborn children’s lives with friends, family, and complete strangers I randomly meet while waiting for the subway train

When kids are older (i.e. out of the womb), you can brag about their eating habits, ability to track objects, and innate understanding of quantum mechanics. But while in the womb, about all you can do is show the occasional ultrasound and reference websites or apps that describe the developmental stages the fetus is going through.

My beloved shared a couple of these websites with me, but I was struck by the way the fetuses were always compared to fruit. Thinking there must be something better, and less food-fixated, I finally downloaded Sprout for the iPad since our OBGYN recommended it.

Alas, even the good people at Sprout must be using hungry, pregnant women to write their content, as every entry relates the size of womb-bound babies to food. At fifteen weeks, our twins have morphed from the size of sesame seeds to grains of rice, peas, blueberries, grapes, olives, shrimp, figs, key limes, small lemons, avocados, and next week they will be back to lemons again.

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to suspect that the whole thing is simply a recipe for some elaborate fruit salad with shrimp. The only downside is it will take me 40 weeks to get the entire recipe.

Then again, perhaps it is for the best. I mean, if it were written by men, we would probably have to read how the baby is now the size of a Vienna sausage, a small hot dog, a chicken leg, a pork chop, and a decent cut of steak.

Still, I could not help but wonder why descriptions were not simply given in length and weight – and then I remembered those words of wisdom handed down to me by my father and his forefathers before him: “No two pregnancies are alike and every pregnancy is different for the father.”

Truer words were never spoken: first we had one child, now we’re expecting twins. Applying my daughter’s background in quantum mechanics, I can assure you there is no way we are going to risk having triplets next.

Fruit salad anyone?

Photo by elefevre7 via Flickr