Easter Egg Mischief

8:30am: I step out of the shower. Madeleine is laying on her tummy in the living room, diligently coloring in her Tinkerbell coloring book.
8:35am: I finish getting dressed up in my room and gather together all the laundry from our bedrooms into one basket.
8:40am: I come downstairs with the laundry basket and find Madeleine opening an Easter egg full of candy from her Easter basket.

ME: Madeleine, honey, we're not going to eat candy right now. That's for dessert.
MADELEINE: Yeah, because I can have it AFTER I eat my dinner!
ME: Let's put it back in your basket.

As we put the egg away in her basket, which she had put on one of the dining room chairs, I noticed that the chair itself was covered with wet, reddish goo. Detective Courtney to the case. Either a crime had occurred and the chair was covered in bloody evidence, OR:

ME: Madeleine, did you already eat some candy out of one of your eggs?
MADELEINE: (turning to me, her face covered in the same reddish goo) Uh-huh!
ME: No, honey, we don't eat candy in the morning. Candy is for dessert.
MADELEINE: (running to me with two empty plastic eggs) Because... I'm just really thirsty.
ME: You're thirsty? Would you like me to get you some more milk?
MADELEINE: No, I was just really really thirsty for these eggs. So... I ate them all UP!

She must be *totally* confident of the power of her cuteness. Not only did she leave evidence of her sneaky candy-eating all over the chair, as well as her face, but she completely openly admitted to eating TWO eggs worth of candy, with absolutely no remorse, and with a pathetic excuse at that. She was really thirsty for jellybeans?? Yeah. Sorry. I don't buy it.

You'd think I would have learned my lesson and not left her alone with the Easter baskets again, but alas, I hadn't stopped to think about the Easter baskets full of eggs from their church egg hunt. After putting her basket full of loot from home safely away, I went down to put the laundry in the washing machine. Upon returning to the dining room, I found Madeleine on the floor with Julia's church Easter basket, opening each plastic egg and delightedly exclaiming over the contents in each one. Since Julia was upstairs playing in her room, I quickly seized the basket and was determined to cover up all evidence of Madeleine's tampering with the eggs. How quickly I turned from Detective Courtney to aiding-and-abetting Courtney. I couldn't be sure I was putting the various little stickers, tattoos, stamps, and bracelets into their original eggs, but I figured that as long as everything was put away, Julia wouldn't notice.

WRONG.

I should have known better. Julia does not miss even the teeniest, tiniest detail in ANY situation. This is the child who asked me, after I sprayed my allergy spray up my nose, "Mom? Why do I smell Flonase?" (I'm not even kidding. She detected the smell emanating from MY nostrils.) As soon as she had come down from playing in her room, Julia merely gazed over at her church basket and asked accusingly, "Mom, did Madeleine play with my EGGS?"

The Easter baskets are going into hiding.