Written by Excitement of the day…I almost set my house on fire. Not shitting you. I could have done some serious damage today, and thank God for Stevie noticing or it might have been a much more eventful evening in the Romano house.
Here’s how it went down…
These days, H-man is into everything.
EVERYTHING.
The boy is 8 months old and he’s already all over the place. He can speed crawl the length of the living room in 2.7 seconds. No joke. If crawling were an Olympic sport, this kid would be world champion and he’s not even 3/4 of a year old yet.
And if the crawling wasn’t enough, he’s pulling up on everything, letting go, standing for moments at a time. He’s even trying to take steps, though at that point he usually just topples forward or sits abruptly with a soft thump on the carpet.
Hell, he’s even trying to climb–shelves, baby gates, the furniture. Anything in his path, he’s going to try and get over it.
So much for this kid being my mellow one. Looks like it’s just me and the dog.
So today, in the time it took me to walk through the kitchen and let Electra outside, H-man was climbing the curtains. Two fists over his head, pulling up, one foot off the ground, legit climbing folks. It was like scene straight out of a Cirque du Soleil show.
I hollered and lept over the baby gate, narrowly escaping making a fantastic nosedive of my own right into the TV stand. I scooped Henry up in one arm, and tossed the heavy curtain up over one of the wall sconces, thinking I just needed a minute to redirect and distract the little turd before he managed to pull the heavy drape runner down on his head.
That was a plan anyway–redirect, distract, then quickly when Henry wasn’t looking, I would pull the curtain back down and hope he spent the rest of the afternoon trying to climb something a little less dangerous.
But do you know what happens to plans when you have an overly active 8-month-old? They fly straight out the damn window. Plans. Psssh! I’m at the point I don’t even know if I remember what they are anymore.
So yeah, I forgot the curtain flung up over the sconce. And it didn’t really matter this afternoon when the sunlight was spilling in through all the windows. But then that sun started setting, and our living room grew dim, and I walked by and absently flipped the light on like I do every evening, and it wasn’t until a couple hours later, after Stevie kept complaining about some weird smell (which we assumed was our sweaty 6-year-old daughter so we sent her straight upstairs to take a bath) that we looked over and realized our drapes were sizzling on top of the wall sconce while we sat watching playoff hockey.
Homeowner fail.
So now my drapes have a nice crispy spot to remind me what an idiot I am.
But at least the house is still standing and Henry made it through the day without a head injury. Cadence is clean and smelling fresh before bed, so that’s an added bonus. And Stevie managed to score us some delicious Empyrean Peanut Butter Porter, which has officially taken it’s spot as my favorite beer.
You know I’m a glass half full kind of girl. So life is good, scorched curtains and all.
Lori Romano 