Pickles: Home-Grown

I thought it would be fun to share a glimpse of a typical day at the Brown house. This actually happened 3/30/08.

Typical Sunday - after the final bell rings. GAME ON!!!
As soon as Sydney is let out of Primary, she begins gathering her siblings then meets me in my CTR5 classroom on the other side of the building. Once we are all together again, we madly glance around for a brief glimpse of our father and wave across a crowded foyer. With that accomplished, it is off to the car.
As my children play dodge with cars in the parking lot, we finally make it to our mini-van. By this time, I am usually nearing manic-anxiety levels. Everyone is shoved into the van, wandering aimlessly between the front, middle and back sections of the van, including the back-hatch. As we head for home, the passive-aggressive side of me is coming out. I begin taking turns and round-abouts at a slightly increased rate of speed, knocking the children off balance and bouncing them around the inside of the vehicle, hoping to send a subtle message about the importance and value of seatbelts. Due to the outrageous laughing this generates, I’m guessing my message is not being received as it was intended.
We pull into our drive-way and the grand exit occurs. And why the furious race you may ask? The fridge. Everyone is starving, bellybuttons scraping backbones, or so I’m told. I am trying to breathe deep in order to maintain some semblance of a responsible grown-up who can actually control, if not her children, at least herself. It is barely working.
I lay Rachel in her crib, who is loudly proclaiming the unjust predicament she is in, being in a saturated diaper, unable to speak, sit-up, or scavenge for herself. I return to the kitchen and pry the children away from the fridge, explaining to each that it is the much anticipated, though not so much for them, left-over lunch day! Firmly and with complete understanding by each child that my grip could easily become what has become known as the death grip, I undo anything that would hamper them from changing their clothes, such as buttons and zippers. With all such obstacles taken care of, I retire to my room, promptly lock the door and begin to peel off the nylons that have kept me in a most uncomfortable bondage for the last 3 ½ hours. Knowing that lunch time awaits, I take a deep breath and open the door. This is a typical after-Sunday experience for the Brown family.
What is not typical is coming into the kitchen and finding that Camille, all 2 ¾ years of her, has found her own lunch. She gets as far as completely undressing and disposing of her diaper, in a place only she knows the location of, and then decides she has an impulse for a pickle. So I come into the kitchen to a view that, I must admit, makes me laugh, hard. There is Camille, in all her natural glory, pure skin from button-nose to her bare-piggy-toe, feasting on home-canned pickles. And for the first time that day, since my head left my pillow that morning, I stand still and I laugh. Some from the hilarity of the situation, some from sheer exhaustion and some from the gratefulness that life is not always typical And so for today, I find myself happy that this typical Sunday afternoon is not so typical after all.