Today’s guest post comes from Karin Brown. Karin is a stay-at-home mom to three girls and two boys, ages ten years to ten months, who consistently keep her on her toes. She is an active volunteer at her children’s elementary school and enjoys collecting re-tellings of fairy tales, specifically Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. She received her bachelors degree from Brigham Young University in English and enjoys reading, hiking, international travel, music, and dancing in her kitchen when no one is looking.
As soon as church is over and my eight-year-old daughter is let out of Primary, she begins gathering her younger siblings. She picks up Parker from his primary class and Camille from her nursery class then meets me in my CTR5 classroom on the other side of the building. After all ten of my CTRs have trickled out to their own parents, we then hunt down five-month-old Rachel, who was pawned off to a member of the Primary presidency while I taught my class. As soon as we are all together again, we madly glance around for a brief glimpse of our father, also known as bishop. As soon as that is accomplished and we wave across a crowded foyer, we’re off to the car.
Currently it is warming up to a high of forty-five degrees in Utah so I will not delve into the drama of coats at this point, since anything over forty is not considered coat-worthy. 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 the point of manic-anxiety levels and a considerable amount of energy is being used to maintain my Sunday smile and to breathe without breaking down. Everyone is finally shoved into the van, crouching underneath the bulk of Rachel’s car seat, because who would ever think to open another door that provides obstacle-free access to their seats? Tired of fighting the seatbelt/car seat war, I let the children wander aimlessly between the front, middle and back sections of the van, including the back-hatch. With no seatbelts fastened and the doors barely closed, the engine is started, the van shifts into drive and we are off to home base. At this point, the passive-aggressive side of me is coming out as I take turns and round-abouts at a slightly increased rate of speed, knocking the children off balance and benignly 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 laughter 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. Still only one door is used as an exit, which results in near stampeding as the herd again crowds beneath Rachel’s car seat, scrambling to be the first inside. And why the furious race you may wonder? The fridge, standing firm and constant, holds the promise of culinary indulgence for my young brood. Everyone is starving, bellybuttons scraping backbones, or so I’m told. As I unlatch my seatbelt, I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. I slowly trudge from the garage, through the house door and into the kitchen. I am trying to breathe deeply 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 baby 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. While she continues her wild appeal to any and all of those in the house who have by now learned to completely tune her out, I grab each child, one by one. I briskly pull them away from the fridge, explaining to each that it is the much anticipated, though not so much for them, left-over lunch day. And that they need to change out of their Sunday clothes before they can eat. Like wrestling with a greased-up monkey, I quickly 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 three-and-a-half hours. Finally, in more comfortable clothes and a slightly more relaxed state of mind (by that I mean, not manic), I enter the fray again. Lunchtime. And this, my friends, is a typical Sunday morning, week in, week out
What is not typical is coming into the kitchen and finding that Camille, all two-and-three-quarter 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. Her four-year-old brother, happy to oblige, helps her take the jar of home-canned pickles out of the fridge, opens it and sets it up for her on the counter, toothpicks and all. 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, beautiful skin from button-nose to her bare piggy-toe, feasting on pickles. And for the first time today since my head left my pillow this 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 morning is not so typical after all.
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