I meant to write about this a while back. Life seems to get away from me though and when I finally remember it turns out to be long ago. I just can't not write about this story because it needs to be remembered.
Back when Andy was just about 3 weeks old we had a traumatic experience here. Since Andy was born mornings are really slow for me. It is a major challenge for me to get out of the house by 9:00 so when there isn't anything going on you might find me in my PJ's around 11:00 or 12:00. I know it is bad but I do make sure I am ready for the day by the time I serve lunch. Well it was getting to that later part of the morning and I had jumped into the shower after I got Andy down for a nap. After the shower I quickly ran down to the family roon check on him because he was fussing. While I was taking care of him Nathan called down to me letting me know he needed to use the bathroom. At the time he was potty trained but he liked a lot of help. I called up to him and told him to get on the potty and I would be up soon to help.
I continued to take care of Andy and spent a couple of minutes nursing him (remember I had just gotten out of the shower... this might be TMI but I was just in my towel). I hear Nathan and I call up to him asking if he needs my help. He lets me know that he is ok so I forgot about him. After a couple of minutes I hear the toilet flush and I hear water start running. It took me a few seconds to realize that Nathan cannot reach the sink to wash his hands. All of the sudden I realized that the sound of water running was really loud and was much more than would come from the sink. I put Andy down and ran upstairs as fast as I could.
To my dismay the toilet is overflowing and the whole floor was already full of water. I get down to turn off the water to the toilet and as I am doing this the fire alarms start going off in the house. I don't know why they are going off but I have toilet water all over everything and I am getting really upset. I kick Nathan out of the bathroom and then I start to try to figure out why the alarm is going off. I start to run down stairs and I look over into the family room and I see that water from the toilet has leaked into the floor under the sink and is now running through to the fire alarm in the family room ceiling leaking all over my floor right next to Andys car seat where I had set him. Nathan is crying Andy is screaming and I am in a panic trying to get dressed.
It took me a minute to realize that I need to get to the breaker box so I could stop the alarms. I finally get to the breaker box and for some reason I cannot get it open. This was the perfect time for my sister to call me. I am a mess because the water is still trickling through the ceiling and the cannot get the alarms off. She tells me nicely that everything will be ok and that I just need to calm down and take a second. She tells me to call Jake and that she will check back with me in a few minutes. I call Jake in tears and ask him what I am doing wrong and why can't I open the breaker box (I still wasn't calmed down). He pretty much told me the same thing that my sister did plus asked if I was ok and if he needed to come home. I finally got the alarms turned off. It was on the same breaker with the bathroom and hall light which made for an interesting clean up. I pretty much had an hour of crazy.
When questioning Nathan later I found out that he had put a roll of toilet paper down there. I had to keep the power off for a while to make sure everything was dried out. Looking back I laugh really hard. I know I am not the greatest under pressure and this proved it. Thankfully our ceiling survived and we found out that there is and opening under out sink that we need to take care of. So life goes on. Nathan learned not to put anything extra in the toilet and I learned that our fire alarms work.
