MARK MY WORD: FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN, EASTER IS A HOPPING TIME

The Easter Bunny has been visiting our yard.

For disbelievers, I've got proof. There's a rabbit hole near our front porch.

Our youngest daughter, Bailey, regularly checks on the hole to make sure I haven't covered it up.

She confidently tells me I can't evict the Easter Bunny.

When you're 5, you can't wait for that great big bunny to hop through your neighborhood and leave you colorful Easter eggs and Easter candy.

Even older kids look forward to the sugar high that Easter brings.

Personally, I think Bailey would live in the rabbit hole if she could. Nature's original poster child, she loves to be outside.

The other day I found her standing in the middle of our quiet residential street dressed in dress-up clothes and proudly waving an oven mitten as if it were a scepter and she were the Queen of England.

It's nice to be in control of your environment, even if it is the middle of the street.

Bailey loves to hang out in the yard, climbing trees, playing in the dirt and befriending bugs. Even weeds get her friendly attention. She has been known to leave her play purse hanging from a tree branch in the front yard as if it were her own personal closet.

For Bailey, there's nothing like the outdoors.

There's also nothing like her favorite jeans, complete with holes where the fabric has worn through at both knees.

For several weeks, she practically refused to wear anything but her old jeans. Joni and I fought hard for less worn pants. But Bailey wouldn't hear of it.

She couldn't imagine wearing another pair of pants even if her knees did get cold in the morning air.

Thankfully, warmer weather has moved onto the scene and Bailey has embraced shorts as her clothes of choice.

However, she does have a new Easter dress, as does her sister, Becca. Dressing up, after all, is an Easter tradition. Even Bailey wouldn't consider wearing jeans to Easter service.

Joni has vowed to patch up Bailey's old blue jeans one of these days. But I think Bailey would just as soon keep them in their current condition just like that old terry cloth Buddy Bear she clings to at night.

Her stuffed bear is barely there, its outer fabric nearly worn away from the hard knocks of being hugged and tugged by the Nature Child.

Joni made several suits of clothes for Buddy Bear, but Bailey wasted little time in undressing the cuddly bear. Within weeks, Buddy Bear was back to his worn out self.

Sooner or later, I hope we can put the bear back into some clothes. If nothing else, it would help hold in the stuffing.

The poor bear increasingly finds himself discarded for hours, stuck under the covers in Bailey's bed or lost in a bowling bag.

By bedtime, Bailey routinely has forgotten what she did with her Buddy Bear and Joni and I have to organize a massive search for the lovable creature.

We usually it find buried under a pile of clothes or blankets in her room. But that's better than leaving it outdoors.

So far, she hasn't left it in the bunny hole. For that, we're grateful. The busy bunny doesn't have time to baby sit Buddy. Neither, it seems, does Bailey.

In our house at this time of year, there's too much hopping going on even for those of us who aren't wearing bunny ears.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.