"Happy Easter, Daddy!" comes the voice of my little girl. She's all dressed up in her Easter best, a short colorful spring dress I'd gotten her for today. I didn't go to church like she and her mom did, and I don't know why her mom would just drop her off at my house on a day like today without even staying for dinner, but I'm happy to see her nonetheless. She jumps up to hug me, though she only gets partway and I have to lift her the rest of the way into my arms.

"Happy Easter, sweetheart," I say. "You're looking excited today. Did you already get a bunch of chocolate?"

"Uh huh! My Sunday school teacher gave some out to everyone, and Mommy gave me some, too!"

Figures. Get her all hyper and then drop her off with me to deal with the sugar rush. Oh well. Looking closer, I can still see the smudged remains of chocolate on her hands and around her mouth.

Her voice cuts in on my thoughts. "So, Daddy, did you hide any Easter eggs for me?"

"Who, me? Why would I do that? I'd leave the candy in a place I could easily get to it to eat it." I make an exaggerated thinking pose. "Hmm... I think I did see a little rabbit around, and there do seem to be colorful round things everywhere..."

"The Easter bunny came!" My little girl squirms out of my arms and runs off in search of the plastic eggs, gathering them into her hands. She opens several of them as she looks, eating the candy right out of them.

"Don't forget your basket!" I call out after her, but she's several rooms away now as she hunts. Ah, the energy of youth. Grabbing the basket, I go after her, picking up the discarded opened eggs and candy wrappers left in her wake. I'm sure my back will hurt tomorrow from all this bending over, but seeing her smile is worth it.

When I catch up with her, she's searching through the backyard, kneeling in the grass as she checks around the base of the hedges along the fence. As she does, though, it's hard to not notice how much she's grown and developed since the last time I saw her. Obviously, as a father, estranged or not, I'm not staring at my little girl's butt, but considering how she's crawling along, it's hard not to. I wonder for a moment what she'd look like with a little bunny tail. It'd probably fit well with the bunny ear headband she's wearing. She's getting dirt all over her nice dress, and I'm sure her mother won't be happy about it, but that's her problem; she knows what kids are like when it comes to hunting for Easter eggs.

For a moment, it looks like she might be pretending to be a rabbit like kids do — or trying to figure out where she'd hide eggs if she were the Easter bunny. Watching her have fun puts a smile on my face, even though she's going to be a bundle of energy for a while before the sugar crash hits her. Soon enough, she gets bored of hopping around and heads back inside to look for more eggs. I note that she missed a couple outside and grab them and put them in my pocket to re-hide inside.

Inside, she's all over the place — looking on top of books on the bookshelf, getting on top of chairs to get a better view, reaching into lampshades, all sorts of places she thinks I'd hide the eggs. She also digs under the couch for eggs, mostly finding dust instead. Once more, it's very obvious how her butt is sticking out when she does this. But I wouldn't be much of a father if I were to stare, and no matter what my wife thought of me, I'm not that kind of person.

Eventually, she seems to lose steam, and plops down on my lap. I wrap an arm around her, brushing a leaf or two from the bushes out of her hair and straightening out her bunny ear headband. "Did you have fun, sweetie?"

I can feel her nod against my chest. "Uh huh. Thank you, Daddy."

"You're quite welcome. There's a few you didn—"

My daughter shifts forward, making the plastic eggs in my pocket rattle distinctly. Her tired grin turns to a pout. "You can't just hide them on you, Daddy, that's cheating!" It doesn't take her long to fish them out and add them to her basket, but seeing her do so takes its toll on me. When she settles back in, she frowns when she feels something else hard . "Daddy, did you put an egg in your pants?"

I blink. "Huh? Of course not. The ones in my pocket were from outside."

"Then what's this?" Her hand presses on a...rather sensitive part of me. After seeing her crawling around all afternoon,