Lessons in Egg Dying.

Confession: I can be one of those controlling moms.

I will be the first to admit, I have no problem telling Olivia "the right way" to do something.

Its something I've struggled with for sometime and something I am desperately trying to let go of. 

I often find myself saying "that's not right the way to do it"

Wednesday morning, I decided to skip doing our normal school work and we'd spend the morning dying eggs.  I walked away with a few lessons learned from our egg dying activities that morning.

I decided to go the old fashioned way and use actual food coloring instead of one of the $2 egg coloring kits.  My thinking was it would give us deeper egg color.

Well, set up for that way of egg dying was way more involved than dropping some tablets in and watching them fizzle away.  It felt like I spent most of the morning getting it set up and ready.  My only saving grace was that for the first time since she started talking, my child didn't come in and ask me fifty times "what are you doing?"  Even though it took my entire morning, I was able to get it all set up without her hovering under me excitedly waiting to dye eggs.

 We got to the actual dying eggs part and from the get go, I started to inform her of the "correct way to dye eggs."  Because I have some how suddenly become the egg dying expert.  She'd plunk them in and then move on to the next, once every egg was nestled into a bowl, she was ready to take them out.  I kept trying to explain to her that they had to soak for a few minutes so we can get a "rich color."  Yes, those may have been the exact words I used on a three year old.  She wasn't having any of it and started to just take them out with her bare hands and plunk them down in a different color.

The control freak in me started having panic attacks.

I started saying "No! That's not how you do it!" 

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks....

let her do it the way she wants to...

half the fun is in the getting there....

don't ruin her creativity...

let her express herself...

she's not you...

stop controlling her every move...

Thank God that before I got the words "you're messing them up!" out of my mouth, I stopped myself and told her to go for it.

Lesson #1: Stick with the $2 dye kits.

Lesson #2: I put way too much thought into how egg shells look, considering that they will be taken off and thrown in the trash in just a matter of days.

Lesson #3:  Just because its not my way, doesn't mean it the wrong way.

And I must say, her way produces something just as beautiful.