Guardian Angels Doing Overtime

Today the children's guardian angels were hard at work!

It was four o'clock and I was directing John to clean up his craft project off the kitchen table because I was going to start cooking dinner. I was helping him and, when I placed a sheet of stickers on the bookshelf, like the straw on the camel's back, it caused the shelf to come crashing down! The mess was everywhere and the crashing sound shocking. There were still a few boxes of items on the shelf, so I stood there holding the shelf, keeping it in place so it wouldn't fall to the ground and more supplies with it. Thank God, Mary had moments before climbed up onto the windowsill so the spray of glass didn't hit her. John had one second before walked around the corner of the kitchen, so was in a small safe zone as well. I couldn't let go of the shelf, so I was shouting to John to go get Daddy for help. Meanwhile Mary was wailing in fear, John was standing there with his hands over his ears weeping from the shock of it all. I was shouting as loud as I could, "Go get Daddy! Get Daddy for help!" over and over, John becoming more hysterical, and me wondering how on earth Chris was not hearing all the ruckus two rooms away. Then John ran crying to get help and Chris rescued us, pulling the items off the bookshelf so I could let go and get the kids ushered out of the room.

You can see the empty shelf and the spray of items on the desk below.

All the crayons, broken on the ground. I had GLASS jars containing things like GLASS beads, to use for math manipulatives--all scattered everywhere, shattered. The coins in the bank, spilled out. John's beloved magnifying eyeglass on a necklace: broken in half.

The mess spread across the entire kitchen, every corner, to the rear door . . .

. . . under the table . . .

. . . around the corner, up the stairs to the bonus room, and in the play kitchen. Most of the glass was clear so you cannot easily see in these photos that there were hundreds of pieces of glass on the floor.

1. Take deep breaths.

2. Sit with crying children and hold them till they calm down. (The crashing sound really was amazingly loud.)

3. Put children in front of Curious George DVD.

4. Order a pizza. (I stood there for a while thinking that I would clean up the kitchen, then continue with my plans to make a spaghetti and homemade-meatballs dinner. It would be very late, but that would be okay, and virtuous of me to make dinner anyway. Then I decided it would stress me out so much that I'd probably be a crabby wife and mother, so that I would take advantage of modern restauranteering and a $10 coupon for a large pie.)

5. Take a solid hour to pick up every little thing off the floor, going a square foot at a time, using a whisk to hand sweep the entire floor. Shattered glass is everywhere.

6. Eat pizza with the children. More deep breaths.

7. Vacuum the kitchen floor, which was still covered in a patina of tiny sparkling glass.

Above are all the supply items cleaned up and set on the counter before I put them back on the (repaired) bookshelf.

These pictures simply don't do justice to the mess and the amount of shattered glass--from dust, to chunks, to large shards--in the kitchen. I felt so grateful when I thought about what could have happened if the shelf had fallen five seconds earlier when Mary and John were right in its path. Or if it had fallen one of the hundreds of times John climbed up onto the desk and was getting down his own supplies! Truly, I was placing a single sheet of stickers on the shelf and that was enough this time to bring everything crashing down. Thank you, God!