So the Baby Almost Burned the House Down...

No, I'm not kidding.

So it all went down like this:

The baby and I were in the kitchen fixing dinner. I know what your thinking, "OKay, so this is where the fire happens."

Nope.

As I stand over the kitchen sink I suddenly hear the fire alarm going off. My first thought, "Hey, I didn't realize those things actually worked."

Then it hit me, "Those things actually work!"

I turn around and down the hall see a big orange glow and smoke. Oh no.

I run through the kitchen, through the dining room, around the corner and into the foyer where our gas fireplace is. There are huge flames shooting out of the fireplace about 3 feet. Crap.

At this point the baby starts screaming, he is obviously terrified. The dog also starts crying. Well, doing that whine/whimper thing dogs do. Anyhow, I'm frantically looking for the remote control to turn off the fireplace and find that it happens to be on top of the fireplace. Sweet, so now I get to dodge flames to turn the fireplace off. I yell to the baby, "Stay back, run away!" Amazingly, he does. He runs to the other side of the living room, ducks behind the chair and peeks over the arm of the chair, still crying.

I grab the remote and turn the fireplace off. The flames go down, but not out. Oh no. I look closer and realize something else has been thrown into our fireplace. The gas logs are out, but whatever is in there is still burning. I tell the baby to stay put, run into the kitchen, drown a few towels in water and run back. I then grab this blob of plastic and metal to get it away from the source of gas. I do this with my bare hands. I know this wasn't the smartest move in the world, but all I was thinking was that I could deal with a burned hand, not too sure about a burned house or child. My cousin died at the age of 5 in a house fire. I have no desire to relive that.

After pulling the plastic and metal blob off the pilot light, I drown it with water and towels. All the while smoke is everywhere, the alarms are going off, the dog is still crying and so is the baby. The dog is now hiding with the baby behind the chair.

Finally, the fire is out. I pick through the mess and find a piece of metal and plastic. I figure out that it was my large round brush. The baby comes over to me still crying and physically shaking. The poor thing really was terrified. I'm assuming at some point, he got my brush, tossed it into the fireplace (I mean, what else would you do with a brush?) and then came into the kitchen. I figure it had been burning for a while because he was in the kitchen with me when the alarms went off. There also wasn't much left of the brush. There may have been something else in the fireplace with it, but all that was left was piece of the brush.

So now the tip of my pointer finger and the tip of my thumb are pretty burned. I'd say 2nd to 3rd degree because what isn't blistered and black is white. Where it is white there is no feeling whatsoever. I guess the nerves are burned. But, don't worry, the blistered part and the red part make up for it in pain.

You know, I was a firefighter for 15 years. Not once did I ever receive a burn. I have been a mother for 6 years and the baby's mom for only 2 and I have already received 2nd to 3rd degree burns.

I think this proves that motherhood is way more dangerous than fighting fire.