Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Smoke, Fire and Sleeping Kids

My evening ritual after getting my boys tucked into bed is to light a candle near my bed. This fills my bedroom with a wonderful, calming scent. A flickering candle is so relaxing to me.

Not tonight.......

As many times, I slip out into our bubbling hot tub to unwind from the day. Tonight was spectacular, beautiful clear skies with the stars twinkling and the moom shining bright. Aaaahhh......

I turn the bubbles off and I hear this really loud and quite obnoxious beeping. I realize it is coming from inside our home!
#&@%!!! The candle.

I dash upstairs, the candle is melted to nothing, the pedestal is on fire! Quickly get it out, then open the windows and turn on the ceiling fans.

My boys. Fast asleep.

Four. FOUR alarms going off inside our home and they did not flinch. One alarm is inside Matthew's room and he did not wake up.

Leaving a candle burning was perhaps not the best choice, though how many times have we all walked away from a burning candle to go cook, clean or entertain?

What I am still trembling about is:
my boys did NOT wake up with 4 smoke alarms going off
in our home.

I've heard of these "voice alarms" where the mom records a message calmly yelling at the kids to wake up. The point being the kids recognize the voice and will naturally react.

Guess what I am going shopping for tomorrow?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't kids tune out their mom yelling (calmly and otherwise)?
Maybe if you incorporate the words "You have to wake up and blah blah blah now"

Angie Weid said...

@witchypoo - Let me explain when I said yelling I meant in a loud, commanding voice to wake up and get to safety. Not the typical, mom's having a meltdown yelling episode for walking through the house with muddy shoes.

Thanks for helping clarify.

Anonymous said...

I've heard that kids don't wake to smoke alarms. It is indeed very scary. I haven't heard of those voice recording ones (not sure if they're available in Australia or not). I think my kids would sleep through a tornado they're such heavy sleepers.

Anonymous said...

We had a similar thing happen on our fireplace mantle. We have since switched to the flickering rechargeable candles that I hate but are safe. You can google it a find them in a lot of locations or on line.... good luck !

Cathy, Amy and Kristina said...

A firefighter told us that kids actually respond better to the ones that use a recording of the mom's voice.