It Could Have Been Worse....The Microwave Incident

So last Friday, I was in my living laundry room folding clothes on the couch when I heard the microwave beeping as if something had been cooked. I thought it was odd....considering I was in the very next room, and I never heard anyone put anything in the microwave and my 4 youngest were upstairs playing. I walked into the kitchen and was immediately met by TONS....I mean TONS of smoke coming from the microwave. Before opening the vehemently smoking apparatus, I called up the stairs....."Elliot, did you put something in the microwave?" I knew it was probably her, because she had been in the kitchen looking for a snack. My other children know how to use the microwave, although Bryna is usually an accident waiting to happen. She stood at the top of the stairs nodding yes. Then I, in a half panicked half irriated voice, asked...."WHAT?" She said, "POPCORN!" Remember she's 3 and has no idea how to actually use the microwave....hence the abundance of smoke. I carefully opened the microwave door and was immediately accosted by a cloud of smoke which immediately began to rise....smoke definitely rises. I heard my children, upstairs start to cough, and ask....."What's that smell?" I immediately told them to come downstairs, and we began to open windows and doors. I turned on fans and did everything I could think of to clear the house of smoke....and the smell. It wasn't long before the smoke was gone, but the smell.....HELP ME HENRY....it was awful and lingered long into the night. When I took the tray out of the microwave, I noticed that she had in fact put a package of instant oatmeal into the microwave thinking it was popcorn. When NPayne got home, he wiped down the walls and ceiling and removed the now burned to crisp apparatus which use to be our microwave. We sprayed Febreze and lit candles. It slowly started to get better except in a few parts of the house. When I arrived home Saturday morning after my photo shoot, I walked into a wonderful smell of something yummy cooking....YEA! NPayne was boiling vanilla/lemon tea bags on the stove to rid the house of the smell! It worked. By that evening when we had Drew's surprise 9th birthday party (post and pics to come), you couldn't even tell we had had a near disaster....except for the smoke stained wallpaper and the burned up microwave sitting outside.


Note to self....NEVER send Elliot into the kitchen to get herself a snack....and then not check on her when she doesn't come back with something!