It was a Friday evening and a sudden craving for pancakes hit me. Breakfast for dinner sounded like heaven after a tough work week. I gathered the dregs of energy I had left and propelled myself into the kitchen, my excited toddler in tow. I quickly busied myself pulling out everything I would need while trying to skirt my daughter who seemed determined to attach herself to my leg.

She loved to watch me cook but as you can imagine she had proven herself to be quite a handful when she wanted to be. Her short attention span led her out of the kitchen after a few minutes. I couldn’t help but breathe a small sigh of relief as I started measuring out my flour. Almost immediately after finishing that sigh, I turned into my daughter. She had darted in giggling wildly with Daddy reaching out with hands turned claws to tickle the fleeing child.

She ran smack into my knees at full force, knocking me off balance and freeing my grip on the full red bowl of flour and baking soda I had so carefully measured out. I heard a shallow thunk and then a sharp crack and closed my eyes in irritation. I opened them to my husband standing in the doorway, mouth agape and holding his breath for what I'm sure he knew was a sharp, forthcoming rant from me.

I looked around and the scene from the second Ace Ventura movie, where he dusted the hut for prints, came to mind. A fine layer of flour had settled on just about everything and got thicker the nearer to the floor it was.

I took a deep breath, about to let my husband have it for running her in to the kitchen after being countlessly scolded for doing so in the past, when I heard a single clap and a soft giggle. I paused and looked down, a reluctant smile starting to creep across my face.

The bowl had managed to hit my daughter on the way down (the shallow thunk) before clattering to the floor. She looked up at me, her dark eyes a sharp contrast on her now powder-coated white face, with mischievous grin and clapped her hands together. The resulting cloud brought a fresh wave of laughter and spurred her into a short quick string of claps with more laughter followed by little coughs as the cloud grew to envelope her.

I let the breath out in a huff and picked her up, leaning over the floury wasteland to hand her to her father with strict instructions to dust her off OUTSIDE on the porch. From how quickly he moved, I’m sure he was just happy to have avoided a lecture. Dusting off my jeans, I picked up the broom and set to work cleaning up my kitchen turned disaster area, kicking myself mentally all the while for having named my child Eris, a Greek deity of chaos.