"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." - Steinbeck

Against my better judgment, we took E to the Mall to see the Easter Bunny last night. Of course, he freaked out and wanted nothing to do with it. Smart boy. I don't fully understand the whole "freaked out by Santa" thing, because even a mall Santa is still just a guy, with a human face and voice and form. The mall Bunny, on the other hand, was scary to me. Its head was far, far too large for the body wearing it, and it had these huge unblinking eyes, and a fairly scary mouth. I think he was wise not to go to near.

It was after 7pm when we got there, and the Bunny goes home at 8, so after we'd run a few errands we were able to return to the Bunny's enclosure, where E had a wonderful time running amok and pointing at all the rabbits in the decorative dioramas and yelling "a bunny! a bunny! a bunny! a bunny! a bunny!" over and over again at the top of his lungs. I left him with his dad for a few minutes to go buy some pants on clearance, and I could even hear him when I was deep at the back of the store. I suppose some parents would have been embarrassed by this, but I wasn't. The mall was virtually empty, and he was clearly having a great deal of fun.

Around 2am (I think) E woke up crying and fussing. Josh (bless him) got out of bed to go try and get him settled back into bed, but I kept hearing "mamma, mamma, mamma, mamma" in a more and more insistent tone, until I had to get up and reassure him that I was there, too.

The moment I appeared, the crying ceased. I sat with him for a bit, until I thought he was asleep, but when I got to the door it started all over again. When I came back over to the bed he latched onto my hand and tugged on me, so I crawled (remember, he's on a twin mattress on the floor right now) in next to him and he fell almost instantly asleep, snuggled up next to me and holding fast to my hand. We slept like that for a couple of hours, I think.

Its good to be wanted, even at 2 am.