Melted plastic and matches, anyone?

All in one day. And I am sure you can guess who was involved. Yep, Zach. We were cleaning out Dunk's room while he was at EFY and Izzy was sleeping. Zach had been playing legos quietly on the floor. I happened to turn around just as he held up a lit match. Flames! Apparently Dunk had left his match kit for scouts out. Zach got it open, found the striker pad and lit the match. Ofcourse once it was on fire, he dropped it burning onto my carpet! It didn't do any damage and I blew it right out, but can you imagine! We had a long talk about fire safety after that.

Well, as if that weren't enough.

That evening, Tom got home from work and set his big plastic cooler on the counter next the stove. We were on the couch chatting about what needed to be done that evening. Zach went into the kitchen to get a snack out of the cupboard. Tom hollered for him to get down and he trotted out shortly after.

What we didn't know at the time was that he had moved Tom's plastic cooler to the stove so he could reach the cupboard. That wouldn't be an issue normally, except that the knob to the stove was actually on the stove. We normally keep them up to prevent the kids from turning on the stove. Apparently when Zach climbed up he sat on the knob and turned the stove on.

A few minutes go by and Tom sees white smoke pouring from the kitchen. I took the babies out front as soon as we realized it was plastic. Tom had to get his respirator from his truck because the few minutes he was in there trying to get it taken care of made him sick. It didn't catch on fire, thankfully, but it did melt the entire cooler all over our stove. I can't imagine if Tom hadn't been home. It would have been bad, especially because I didn't know that fumes from melted plastic was a very poisonous thing. Thank goodness. He rocks.

Poor Zach was very upset. We weren't mad at him, because it truly was an accident, but he kept saying how sorry he was. He was also very concerned that his dad was "dying" inside the house because it was on fire. I can only hope he learned a lesson that day!

On the funny side, we had his birthday party today (I know... bad mom for making it a month after his real b-day) and some friends of ours gave him a smoke detector! We all got a great laugh out of it and joked that maybe we should just find a way to attach it directly to him!

So for now, I still hold the record of being the only one to REALLY catch our house on fire. Thank goodness... I have to hold the record for something around here!