Saved by a pickle

Last Valentine's Day (not a few days ago, a year ago) my mom sent Emily this giant heart-shaped mylar balloon to have blown up. Well, we never did blow it up. It hung out in Emily's closet for awhile, then we took it out and hung it on her wall with blue painter's tape, then we took it down and it hung out in the closet again. So when it started getting close to Valentine's Day again, I took it out and we were determined to have it filled with air. I carried it around in my purse for awhile, then had it in the car, back and forth into the house...we even took a special walk down to Walgreen's one day to get it blown up but they couldn't do it.

Finally, two days AFTER Valentine's Day, we were coming out of the supermarket and I asked the guy helping us out if they could fill a mylar balloon for us. He happily agreed to help us out, so after loading the groceries into the car he took the balloon inside and brought it back out all filled up, and with a bonus weight on the bottom to keep it from floating away. All free of charge, too. What great service! Needless to say, Emily was elated to finally have her Valentine's balloon. By now you're wondering what this has to do with a pickle, huh? You'll see...
Once we got home, Emily stayed in the driveway playing with her balloon while I unloaded the groceries. She was so happy throwing it up in the air and watching the weight pull it back to the pavement. She climbed on the neighbor's rocks and saw how high the balloon could go in the air. We took pictures. It was so much fun. After about my third trip inside, I hear shrieking coming from Emily outside. I rush out not to find her injured, but the string on her beloved balloon broken, and the balloon floating away into the blue sky, getting smaller and smaller until it became a small shiny dot in the vast blue. I don't think I've ever heard her scream so loud and for so long, even when injured. It was the worst possible thing to ever happen in her 3-year-old life. I could not console her. So I took pictures and video to document the event (FYI, looking at them today, Emily laughed).
After about ten minutes of her screaming and running up and down the sidewalk, we got inside and tried to calm down. Smart thinking on my part, I spotted the jar of just-purchased dill pickles on the counter. "Emily, would you like some pickles?" Like magic, the crying stopped! So I gave her two pickle spears in a plastic cup, and that was then end of that.

Oh, and this whole time, Allison was resting peacefully in her car seat.