Taatuu-taatuu

The boys are not on their best behavior - to put it mildly - and somehow I'm blaming myself. Despite Kenji's arguments that I should let go of the idea of falling short as a mother, I decide to stick to my own misconceptions.

I should do this. I should do that. And I'm not doing a thing - or at least that's how I feel.

Because I did buy them a second hand Duplo fire truck. It was incomplete, but still contained the essentials: two ladders, a fire hose and four firemen. Recently the boys' preschool and primary school have joint educational themes and this month it's about the fire brigade. So Big Brother sings: "We are the firemen, we can extinguish every fire!" and Little Brother is "taa-tuu"-ing all day long. Since I brought in the Duplo, they haven't played with anything else.

This morning I was awake enough to pass for über mom, for a whopping ten minutes. We passed a fire station and I stopped the cargo bike to walk along the red roll-down shutters twice, one round for each of my boys. Together we counted fire trucks and saw real helmets, tough pants and boots, ready for the firemen to come into action. All remained quiet in the fire station though - but über mom got to secretly peek at some firemen's biceps and chest-muscles. I'm beginning to like this theme-based education.