Fire, Mommy, Fire

You can tell by the title of this post that is going to be a rough one. "Fire, Mommy, Fire" were the words I heard at around 7:15 Monday morning. Sunday night was another relatively sleepless night with 4 1/2 hours of sleep divided into two segments. Hubby had to leave early Monday morning to be with a friend who was having surgery at the Navy Hospital across town. At 7AM, I told III and Rosy that I was going to take Baby Boy (who was finally back asleep) to my room and take a nap for an hour. A few minutes later, I hear III and Rosy screaming and beating on my door. "Fire, Mommy, Fire".

It turns out that I had turned on the pot to sterilize some bottles before I went to lay down. Actually I have no idea when I turned the pot on. I think I had been giving Baby Boy bottles and pacifiers non-stop since 3 AM. At some point, the water evaporated and the bottles melted and caught fire. (I'm considering a McDonald's coffee type lawsuit because none of the bottles are labeled "flammable".)

I don't know if I handled it correctly or not, but here's what I did. As soon as I heard the kids, I jumped up and immediately knew what I had done. I sent III and Rosy to the front porch so that I could put out the fire. Thankfully it was still contained in the pot, but it was about 3 feet tall. I ran to the laundry room and grabbed the fire extinguisher. I ran toward the stove and then it hit me. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO OPERATE A FIRE EXTINGUISHER! I know there is something about pulling a pin. Where is the pin? What does a pin look like? What do you do after you pull the pin? These are questions that you want to answer ahead of time. Trust me!

As I stood there with my (useless) fire extinguisher aimed at the fire, I frantically looked around. There was a 2 liter bottle of lemonade on the counter, so I grabbed it and poured it on the fire. Thankfully, lemonade is not explosive or flammable and it put out the fire. Then, it was just a matter of getting the smoke detectors to stop beeping and of getting the smoke out of the house. It took about an hour to get everything back to normal and then I still had to clean the stove area. Baby Boy slept through the whole thing. He spent most of the morning in his bouncer seat on top of the picnic table in the back yard hanging out with Twinkle in her cage and III and Rosy. We have found soot all in the kitchen and tonight we found some in the living room.

Thankfully, my mom is coming Thursday and she and I can work on de-sooting the house.

God is certainly gracious to us and is often watching out for us when we can't watch out for ourselves. I'm thinking that I may suggest a family motto for our family - "We Believe."