Fire Drills

We did 4 or 5 fire drills yesterday. And I mean no one had shoes on, the baby didn't have a shirt on, it was raining out - the whole bit.
Brant is borderline obsessed with being a fireman so we read about fires and fire safety; we watch movies about them, he plays firefighter at least once a day, if not more, we have visited the firehouse...I mean I feel like we do a lot of review on basic fire safety procedure. This is how it went:

• I was really surprised that as much as we have verbally gone over what to do in case of a fire, when the alarm went off and we all got up to "get low and go" the first thing Brant did was reach down to grab a pile of his stuffed animals. I addressed how you don't stop to grab anything, not even your shoes. Just GO!
• Then the boys are moving like turtles down the hallway. I addressed how quickly we need to exit the house if there is a fire.
• Brant went to open the door and it's locked of course, so he couldn't get the door open. He started getting frustrated, etc. I addressed how to calmly unlock the door, etc.
• We picked a central, safe meeting place outside.
• Then I had them yell for help. They were so QUIET - so I addressed that. This scared Jaxon. He buried his head into my lap, butt up in the air. Poor pumpkin.

We talked about being on fire and what to do.
The first thing they do is blow on me and wave their arms. So we talked about stop, drop, and roll. And/or to grab a coat or blanket to suffocate the flames. To illustrate this I grabbed a paper towel and, as I held it over the sink, I started it on fire. I blew on it so they could see that the fire "grew" with air. Then I covered it with a towel and showed them how the flames disappeared. "No air, no fire," I kept saying. I do realize me torching a paper towel could bite me in the butt down the road.
I made sure to have them smell the burnt paper towel. I said, "what does that smell like?" Brant said, "Halloween." True. "This is what smoke smells like. So if you smell it, you know to get help," I said.

This is just the beginning of our safety adventure. As much as we talk about safety, we need to be practicing procedure like this to really prepare them for those situations. It was a great lesson for all of us. My goal is to do a fire drill every two weeks and then eventually just once a month. I'm going to invest in a good safety book so I can enhance our drills, safety procedure, etc.