I came across the book Even Firefighters Go to the Potty: A Potty Training Lift-the-Flap Story while searching for some fun potty training books to help get LittleBrother over this last hump. Or, rather, we hope it’s the last hump. He’s close… ish. The book is by Wendy and Naomi Wax and was illustrated by Stephen Gilpin. It’s an easy-to-read, easy-to-follow and fabulously illustrated book that will likely keep the attention of the potty training age group.

The book itself is not all about firefighters. The front cover and first two-page-spread feature a firefighter. The rest of the book features other people that young children tend to think are cool: police officers, baseball players, construction workers, doctors, astronauts, waiters, pilots, train engineers and zoo keepers. Each page features a scene in which a character has gone missing because he needs to use the potty. The firefighter example finds the other firefighters scrambling to the truck to respond to an alarm but the firefighter who drives the truck is missing. Where could he have gone? Lift the flap… he’s using the potty because even firefighters go to the potty. Rinse repeat with all of the other characters.

LittleBrother thinks this book is hilarious. He loves lifting the flap, announcing where the character in question is and giggling at the absurdity of it all. That, of course, might be the problem. I really think he might believe the book is absurd, a fictional tale about adults going to the bathroom. Of course, that’s not the fault of the book. LittleBrother is just silly.

You might have noticed my heavy use of the masculine pronouns. The only female who uses the potty (shown washing her hands, which is another great point to teach with) is the doctor. Everyone else is male. I mean, I’m all for women being doctors but, really, they could have thrown in one more mail, don’t you think? That negative aside, the children and adults in the book have a variety of different skin tones which is something we always like to see in our books. Win some, lose some, I suppose.

One final and big bonus of this book for both parents and children: the strong, durable pages. They are glossy and have a coating that I would liken to plastic but, trust me, it’s not plastic. If you go to test the pages to find out if they can rip, trust me, they can. The good thing that is unless you’re actively trying to rip the page to write about it in a review, you’re unlikely to rip it. Even LittleBrother, zealously lifting the flap so that he can laugh at the silliness of it all, hasn’t yet ripped off a flap or torn it at all. That’s a big selling point for me when it comes to books like these!

So, yes, we’ve been reading a lot of Even Firefighters Go to the Potty around these parts. That and another funny book (How to Potty Train Your Monster) have become bathroom reading staples. And, really, anytime reading staples as of late. Hopefully they help LittleBrother decide that using the potty isn’t something just to laugh about and he makes the final journey into underwear. I think it’s soon. Or, rather, I hope it’s soon.

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[Disclosure: Links are through Amazon Associates.]

Out and About at the Fire Station is another firefighting book for the younger readers. We grabbed it at the library on our last trip through the stacks. It’s 24 pages long of firefighting information and great illustrations that my boys (mostly) loved. It’s also part of a series on field trips, some of which include the Dairy Farm and the Zoo.

The story is about a class that takes a field trip to a fire station. At the very beginning of the book, we’re presented with a list of questions that one of the students in the class has about firefighters. I thought it was a great list and an important page not to just skip over if you have a child that is old enough for reading comprehension and retention. The list has these questions.

1. How do firefighters find fires?
2. What other jobs do firefighters have besides fighting fires?
3. Do firefighters sleep in their gear?
4. What do they do while they’re waiting for fires?

Those are some good questions. In fact, I just recently learned that FireDad does not, in fact, sleep in his blue workpants. You would think I would have known that as we’ve been married for five years but, well, I didn’t. I learn new things every day! I digress. The book starts out with the kids visiting the fire department and meeting Firefighter Tim and Firefighter Raj.

While this book has a good mix of skin colors both on the fire department and in the class, I did notice that the only female firefighter was on the next to last page, walking a dog. While not quite as antiquated as the old firefighter books that we have, I still find it somewhat disheartening.

The rest of the book is decent despite the lack of female firefighters on the crew. (If you’re looking for a good female centered firefighter book, read my review of My Mom is a Firefigher.) The questions at the beginning of the book are answered as are many others. We learn about trucks, what else the firefighters have (rescue boats, an ambulance) in their garage, how far a ladder on a fire engine can reach and much more. We even learn a bit about arson, as in what it is and why it’s bad, not how to do it!

No good firefighter book is complete without a lesson in safety. After we learn that firefighters are busy all day (checking trucks, visiting schools and so on), we’re given a brief lesson in fire safety. I found the particular page to be too wordy and not really geared toward the baby-preschool age group that it is supposedly written for. Hopefully parents reading this long page to their kids can keep it interesting. Ideas include actually having your kid show you how to stop, drop and roll or how to feel if their door is hot.

Despite the lack of females and the wordy last page, the book does hold its own. The illustrations are very interesting, giving both BigBrother and LittleBrother many things to look at on each page. They enjoyed pointing at things and either asking questions or telling me what they knew about life in a fire station.

As the book is only available in hardback on Amazon for $22.60, I don’t think we’ll be purchasing it. I can see them borrowing it from the library again as we have done with many a fire book in the past. If you can find it in a soft cover, it might be a welcome addition to your own library.

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[Disclosure: Links are through Amazon Associates.]

When I was reading See Mom Run: Side-Splitting Essays from the World’s Most Harried Moms by Beth Feldman (and other amazing blogger/writers), I laughed out loud. I think I might have cried twice but I mostly laughed out loud. The laughing was mainly due to the way that I related to all of the stories in different ways.

I related really well to a story told by Meredith Jacobs of Modern Jewish Mom about how she locked her daughter in the car. She kept it a secret from her husband. I laughed so hard at this story that I nearly choked on my tears. Why?

I’ve locked my kid in the car. But I didn’t get to keep it a secret.

It was a warm June morning and I decided that I would take my lovely two year old son out to run some errands. We were home alone for a two week period as my husband was away with the Army attending a school for his recent promotion. I was twenty-some weeks pregnant with what we knew at that point to be our second son. Errands needed to be run in the early morning or I simply wasn’t going to get to them, what with the being alone, summer heat, pregnancy and a two year old.

So, off we went! I put my purse in the front seat. I put my son in his car seat and buckled him in tight, handing him a book to keep him happy on the drive. I shut the door. I walked around. I grabbed the handle and pulled only to find that the handle snapped right back, leaving the door shut.

And locked.

For a brief instant I thought that I simply had done it wrong because, in that moment before it all sunk in I figured that there are so many different ways to open a car door, right? I tried again. No dice. I walked as quickly as my pregnant behind would allow me to walk around the rear of the vehicle and tried the passenger side door. Double the no dice thing. I looked at the front seat and realized that my cell phone was sitting inside my purse. I glanced at the front of the house, knowing without checking that I had locked the front door.

Panic.

I ran to our neighbor’s house. Yes, I ran. Pregnant with complications, I still ran. She let me use her phone and I dialed the fire department.

Did I mention that my husband works for the fire department? Did I also mention that this would have been his shift day had he been working and not away with the Army? I didn’t? Well, all of that information is true. As such, I called the people that I was the absolute most familiar with at the fire department and sobbed into the phone, “I LOCKED HIM IN THE CAR!” They said they were coming.

I stood outside with my neighbor as we waited. My son was more patient then than he is now and, like Meredith’s daughter, he looked at me with a confused look on his face. “Why is Mommy outside the car? Get in Mommy, you goofball.” Things like that. He waved. He played with a book that I miraculously had given him before I locked him in the vehicle. At least I did something right.

Eventually, I heard the familiar sound of a fire truck start down our hill. I looked up. There came the bright, red fire engine… with its lights on. In it I saw my husband’s captain and another good firefighter friend. I was mortified as neighbors stuck their heads out of their front doors. My son craned his neck to see the fire truck. I wanted to hide under the car.

After a moment of discussion, it was decided that they would crawl in a window of my house and unlock the door so that I could retrieve the spare set of keys. This would ensure that nothing would break on the car in trying to unlock it. Sounds easy enough.

Great. People I know and that work with my husband, traipsing around in my house that I thought, “Oh, sure, we’ll run errands now and I’ll clean up this mess while my son is taking his afternoon nap.” I should have just said, “Sure, climb on in! Be sure to look at my dirty underwear in the bathroom when you walk through!” Mortified. Absolutely mortified.

The house was unlocked. I retrieved the spare keys. I opened the car door, unbuckled my son and pulled him into my arms. To which he yelled, “WOO WOO TRUCK!” He didn’t even know that he had been trapped in the car. I thanked my husband’s coworkers. They left. We got back in the car… without creating any lights and sirens drama… and went about our day.

Now here’s where my story differs from Meredith’s. While she was able to keep her story a secret, I couldn’t very well keep that a secret from my husband considering not only his fire department responded but his very shift. That said, I didn’t even get to keep it a secret from local friends and family. In the response call section of the newspaper the next day, the report stated that the fire department responded to a call at an address (which was ours) in which a child had been locked in the vehicle. It went on to say that the “boy looked unharmed and was happy to see the big red truck.”

What it neglected to say was that the mother looked pregnant, panicked and utterly mortified.

And that’s why I laughed so hard at the story and the others like it in See Mom Run. It’s so wonderful to learn that I’m not the only one flubbing my way through motherhood. I’m so glad to be able to laugh with these other moms at my foibles, flaws and sometimes fantastic moments.

(Some of you may remember this story from my original parenting blog. I rewrote it for this blog book tour because it needed to be on this blog, don’t you think?)

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[Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book with intent of writing about it in this blog tour. Links are through Amazon Associates.]

As I said, we checked out some special firefighter Christmas books from our library earlier this month. I’ve already reviewed one, A Small Christmas, and now it’s time for another!

Firefighter’s Night Before Christmas is a true gem. Written by Kimbra Cutlip and illustrated by James Rice, the book follows the rhyme scheme of the original Night Before Christmas. I had hesitated borrowing this book from the library in years past because I know how long the original story is and I feared that the boys wouldn’t be able to handle it until now (ages 4 and 2). I was right. They not only handle it well but they really, really, really like this book.

In this particular Night Before Christmas series book, we see how the firefighters have gotten ready for Christmas by playing Santa (warning if you haven’t had the “he’s a helper of Santa because Santa is very busy” conversation), made a meal and so on. They were the “unlucky stiffs” who had to work the “Christmas Eve shift.” This makes us laugh this year as FireDad will be working Christmas Eve (but has Christmas Day off, thankfully). When, much to their surprise, Santa shows up! On an aerial rig with “lights on display,” because what else would Santa drive?

Then, as Santa is sampling their five-alarm chili, what else should happen but the alarm going off? I got all teary eyed when I got to the part that really hits home with any fire family:

We jumped in our boots as we’d all done before,
But a Christmas Eve call was different for sure.
Visions of families flashed in our heads,
While all of us hoped ours were safe in their beds.

Sniffle.

The firefighters race off to fight the fire into the dawning hours of Christmas morning. Tired, they return to their house to find a Christmas miracle: snow, a snowman and a “shiny new pumper.” And a laptop! And a toy chest! And new socks! And a new grill! And a bed! And a TV! And lounge chairs! And finished paperwork!

BigBrother loves reading through what everyone received. He also likes the part at the end of the book where Santa Claus signs the paperwork as “Ol’ Sergeant Nick.” The rhyme scheme of the book, familiar to them from the original story, keeps their attention as do the fun, festive illustrations. One review accused this book of having “halting” rhymes but I’m assuming that reader wasn’t familiar with some of the fire terminology. I do believe that this book will also be purchased for our library of Christmas books. I mean, it’s the perfect addition, is it not?

I think Firefighter’s Night Before Christmas would be a welcome and loved library addition for any fire family raising children. Or even for grandparents who are/were firefighters who like to read with/to their grandchildren. Furthermore, even if you aren’t a firefighter but have children who love fire trucks, this would be a great book to have for Christmas Eve or the surrounding season. This book is actually part of a series, Night Before Christmas Series which has everything from Nurse’s Night Before Christmas to Teachers’ to An Irish Night Before Christmas! I think we may start checking some other ones of these out over the next few years.

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[Disclosure: Book is from the library. Links are Amazon Associate links.]