Fireman Sam

I do not consider myself an unfit mother. After all, my children ALWAYS wear shoes in public, RARELY does their lunch consist solely of Cheetos, and I am most proud to say, that ALL of their bruises are of their own doing. Now, that's not to say that they are covered in them, but the occasional leg bruise on our four-year old is always from him having run into something or horseplay. Our 15 month old, well, you know how new walkers are.

The events of last night, however, make me wonder about this unfit mother business...

And the story goes like this:

Chris was working until 10pm so I was home alone with the kids doing the dinnertime routine which consists of first bargaining on the menu, preparing it, and finally, bargaining again for its consumption. Alas, last night it was settled that they would feast on mac n' cheese and fried shrimp. Everything went very smoothly - Paige and Zach played while I whipped everything up.

A few minutes later, shrimp was fried, mac n' cheese was cooked and their plates were served. Time for them to eat...not quite. I noticed that the kitchen was a little smokey and figured it was the fry pan on the still-hot burner. I thought to myself "put this plate down in the sink then turn back to the stove and remove the fry pan to cool burner." Well, when I turned back around to face the stove, I caught a glimpse of a fire in the wall oven. My knee jerk reaction was "Holy Shit". While trying not to exude the panic I was feeling, I picked up Paige, grabbed the phone and said to both Zach and Paige "let's go outside for a few minutes guys". Of course, by this time, Zach was wanting to know what was going on.

I made the call to 911 explaining that there was a fire in my wall oven, was patched through to the fire dispatch and was told that a fire truck was being sent out. In those quick moments, I could not recall whether we had a gas or electric wall oven and my fear was that if it was gas, it may well explode. Hoping that I could get our neighbors to watch the kids while this all went down, we walked over. Quickly though, our neighbor ran from his house to ours, opened the oven, pulled out the pizza box that was ablaze and poured water over it. Fire out and no fire extinguisher mess to clean up (yes, we do have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen pantry). Only thing was that I'd already called the fire department and could faintly hear the sirens.

Minutes later, there was not just one, nor two, but THREE fire trucks at our home. One right in front, one blocking the road to the left and the third blocking the road to the right. Oh, and the fire marshall - he came out as well. What a little party, right?

Two firefighters from the first fire truck make their way up to the driveway where I explain everything. Our dog, Frankie, is going apeshit at this point because they are in their suits with tanks and masks on. He's ready to eat them and seriously starts considering it as they enter our house. I am left outside to apologize profusely to the fire marshall for what I feel is gross overkill. He assures me that it was certainly not overkill and that I did exactly what I was supposed to do. That made me feel a bit better. But really, you're supposed to call 911 and receive three firetrucks on your doorstep in minutes for a pizza box that has caught on fire in your oven? Apparently so.

Now granted, this could have been a much different story had the wall oven been gas. Luckily, it is an electric unit. This, I remembered after I made the 911 call. You see, we are about 2 weeks away from the demo phase of our kitchen remodel and I recalled our contractor saying that relocating the wall ovens would not be a major undertaking as they are electric and would not require the running of new gas lines. Now, can you imagine that flags that would have went up at the insurance company when they discovered that the kitchen that burned to ashes was about to be remodeled. Hmmm....that has insurance fraud written all over it, does it not?

So, how did this all happen? My dear, sweet 15 1/2 month old was the culprit. To say that she gets into everything is a massive understatement. "Curious", some people call it - "Holy Terror", I say. Anyhow, it would seem as though little missy here, waltzed right up to the oven and began pressing buttons, hit the right combination and voila', the oven is on at 400 degrees.
I can vaguely remember her being by the oven for a second or two before I told her to play with her kitchen.

So, while some events teach you to slow down and take time to smell the roses, not this one. This event has taught me to check my oven every once in a while to make sure my little spitfire firestarter has not turned the damn thing on and to use the lock controls.

And now, you know the rest of the story...