Stop, Drop and Roll

Today we finally purchased a fire pit for the backyard. Technically, I guess it's more of a "fire table", since it sits up on the deck, but to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to. It's round and has about a 6 inch ledge all the way around - wide enough to sit a drink on, if you really wanted your beer nice and toasty warm. It's less than 3 feet across, so not too large, but perfect for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows, which is what we did. (Aside: two years ago, for Owen's second Christmas, we bought a small, potted evergreen, thinking we wouldn't have to worry about him pulling it over on himself, and then we could plant it in the yard to keep. It never made it into the ground, and it never even made it out of the backyard - it died a slow death, over in the composting corner. Fast forward two years and we have most excellent, well seasoned firewood for our first ever fire! Waste not, want not!)

It was all we could do to keep Jake from crawling over and pulling himself up using the ledge, since Mr. I-Love-To-Cruise-The-Furniture couldn't understand why this particularly interesting piece of backyard decor was off limits. But Owen was really, really good. Always gave it a wide berth when he was walking by, and never once tried to reach over and touch, etc.

I'm putting this all down to preparation. My parents have a similar wood burning apparatus in their backyard, and he's used to fires at Grandma and Grandpa's house from last summer. And I can't remember how the dicussion first came up, but one of his favourite "stories" is about fire safety. While Owen loves him a good story about Cars or Thomas, sometimes he's into non-fiction. I laughed really hard when Erica once told me that she explained potholes to Nathan one day, and from then on, he'd request "The Story of Potholes". That was before I had my own two-year-old, who requests the story of "Mommy and Owen go to the Grocery Store", "Owen and Jakey Eat Their Lunch", or "What We Do If There's A Fire".

Owen knows if your clothes catch on fire, you are supposed to Stop, Drop, and Roll. This is a favourite game at Casa del Howard. It sometimes gets a little out of hand, like when Owen shoves Jake down and rolls the poor baby over and over. "But Mommy!" he yells indignantly, as I carry him off to his room for timeout, "Jake was on FIRE!!" He knows the phone number you call to get the firefighters to come to our house is nine-one-one. And he knows that the firefighters will come spray water on the house, and that we'll have to go stand outside. He even knows that we'll all go over to Anthony's house (Owen's favourite neighbour) to wait safely until the firefighters say it's okay. Technically, he also knows that if he hears the smoke detector go off, that means that there's a fire and Mommy or Daddy will come get him to leave the house, but since our detector (right outside the boys rooms) HAS gone off in the middle of the night, and NEITHER boy woke up (it was the "low battery" warning, so it wasn't continuous, but it still went off with a long, loud, shrill BEEEEP every 5 minutes starting at 2 am one night until we managed to pry a 9 volt out of one of Owen's toys....) it's just academic.

So, we're looking forward to many more fun evenings around the fire. And if you happen to come by and see us rolling around in the family room, don't worry. We're just practicing for the inevitable playing.