The morning was unfolding as it typically does - busy with preparations of four breakfasts, a lunch to-go, and two cups of greatly watered down apple cider. All of that went off without a hitch, but we usually have two breakfast courses around our house. One that involves the kids eating whatever I give them first (usually either oatmeal or honey nut cheerios) and almond butter toast for me. Another that usually involves yogurt and berries for the kids and a nice berry breakfast bowl for me.
We're big breakfast people.
So like any normal person does, I pop my shredded coconut into the toaster oven to get nice and crisp for my berry bowl. Normally, I watch it like a hawk, because it can burn in roughly .6 seconds when unattended. This morning, however, my children were in rare (slash usual) form. They were bickering over a toy that resulted in absolutely window-breaking shrills from my son and a matched tone and firmer grip from my daughter.
Calmly, I yelled over them to stop the madness. Then I got down to their level, removed the offending toy from the situation, and explained to both of them the inappropriate nature of their behavior.
While I was busy being super mom, my coconut turned black. When I moved to grab it out, it burst into flames. Not smoldering ashes, not smoking, flames. So I'm staring at the fire contained inside my toaster oven and thinking the following:
- What do I do?
- What do I do?
- What do I do?
- ...Do we own a fire extinguisher?
- Should unplug something that's burning?
- Something about electrical fires.
And I'm saying, "Uh, uh, uh" and doing small tiptoe dances so that I'm ready to go when I figure out my course of action. Graciously, the kids are silent while I work through it.
Finally, I grab the tray the coconut is on (where it is proving to be excellent kindling) and I throw it into the sink, turn the water on, and watch the flames sizzle out into the small black caterpillars that remained.
Crisis averted.
My daughter had remained silent for the entire scenario. Silence for her is like... finding a four leaf clover - exciting and rare. Clearly, she was taken aback by this experience. My son also remained in stunned silence, but for him, that's pretty normal. He takes in most situations, regardless of their excitement level, just like that.
Naturally, I realize that I need a serious course in fire safety as well as to find our fire extinguisher.
This couldn't have happened in better timing as the next day we were going to my daughter's preschool for the first time ever - to learn about fire safety. And see a fire truck. Thank God, that'd be the first one my kids saw up close.
For the whole presentation I'm figuring out if there's a sly way for me to interject something like, "What should you do, just if it happened to happen that you, like, were cooking and something ignited?" But it didn't sound natural as the conversation was really about fire safety from the smoke alarm on. Talk about a missed opportunity.
Thankfully, we made it through the presentation, the crawling firemen, and the fire truck tour -complete with holding the water hose, without my daughter ratting me out. I think my son might have tried, but his version is something like: "Ma! Fi! 'Ot. Oooo" So I wasn't in much danger of someone picking up on it.
On the way home, however, my daughter peppered me with questions and comments now that she was in her comfort zone.
"Why do the firemen dress like that?"
"I don't want them to come to our house."
"That's scary, Mama. I don't like that."
"Why does the truck have to come to your house?"
"I don't like the noise that makes."
I repeated the fireman's answers (didn't you listen at all, child?) and eventually said something like, "And fires in the house are bad."
"But Mama, you started a fire."
"....yeah... " was all I came up with.
I'm thinking that this memory will be... shall we say, singed into her mind for a while.
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