April Fool's Day

April Fool's Day was never a huge holiday around our house and this is why. One year when my youngest brothers were very small my mother bought several boxes of sugared cereal which was a big deal. She replaced the Froot Loops and Lucky Charms with our usual, corn flakes, and waited and watched. When Kelly, expecting manna, poured corn flakes into his bowl he burst into tears. That was the end of my mother's April Fool's antics.

I, however, still long each year for a harmless little family joke. Our children's favorite was the year Jay and I served up ice cream for breakfast. My favorite was 2004 when Lacey Grace was just shy of one year old. From my journal: I played my first April Fool's joke on my children this year. Topher is 6 and Ronan is 4 - old enough to be included in the hallowed April Fool's tradition of Gotcha!. I undressed Lacey Grace and with a red marker I made little dots all over her body like Chicken Pox. When I completed my art project I carried her into the bathroom where Ronan was a shriveled raisin (of the golden variety) in the bathtub. Promptly, he played into my hands by saying, "Mom, why does Lacey have red spots all over her?" "Oh my," I gasped in mock alarm, "Lacey has the Chicken Pox!" Topher came racing in from doing homework at the kitchen table. He looked at Lacey quizzically and then said with one eyebrow cocked, "Mom, it looks like someone has drawn all over the baby with a red magic marker." "What?!!!" I spluttered. "How could you tell?" So much for bluffing. A poker face has never been my strong suit. We all laughed a little (Ronan remaining fairly bamboozled at the idea that on one day of the year it's O.K. to draw on the baby) and I went in to help Topher with his homework. I heard a series of splashes from the bathroom and not long afterward Lacey Grace came scooting out of the bathroom at record speed wearing a 50 pound diaper. There was only one red dot remaining at the top of her left cheek. Ronan had put his sister in the tub with him and "washed her off." This April Fool's Day the joke is on me.