My little firefighters

With the windy weather the past couple days, we have been forced inside to play a bit more than usual.

I casually mentioned to Sam that we needed to clean up the basement (after a long summer of my depositing all sorts of things at the bottom of the stairs which had rendered the passageway to the play area impassable). I had planned on accomplishing most of the work while they were at school, but my eager helpers made me tackle it a bit sooner.

The kids were playing nicely together.

Without any mom-participation.

And fairly quietly.

It was lovely.

I was going on not a lot of sleep after two nights Sam being hard to put to bed combined with Sadie's middle-of-the-night need for comfort during really loud wind and storms and was about to capitalize on the rare opportunity to lay down on the couch and perhaps rest my eyelids for a few moments.

Then Sam exclaimed "Mom - we were going to clean the basement - remember?!"

And I said, "Oh, yes, Sam. I can't wait to clean the basement with you and Sadie helping me!"

OK, maybe not.

But I managed to fight the urge to say "Wouldn't you just like to keep playing while I take a little nap?"

Because, while there are a lot of things I have done that wouldn't be classified as world's-best-parenting, I do have enough of my mother in me to not actively discourage my children from cleaning.

Especially when they are volunteering to clean up a mess that I made.

So we headed down. They were in heaven re-discovering all the basement had to offer, and I even managed to get a few things organized amidst the chaos.

One of their discoveries prompted a new round of fire-fighting.

(Sam was on a fire-fighter kick a couple years ago, which seemed to have been left behind with the discovery of superheroes. Since then I have had to make up new superheroes on a near-daily basis to pretend to be - he isn't happy pretending your run-of-the-mill Batman and Spiderman - and I am quite excited not to be coming up with "Bubble Girl" or "Foam Man" and naming their related powers for a few days.)

Here are my little firefighters on their way into Sadie's room to get the most recently called-in fire.

Every firefighter uses a drill and a noodle-hose, right?

Sadie seems to think snowpants and dress-up high heels are part of the uniform.

(And she reads on the job.)

Sam needed to be reminded the hose is to be used on the fire, not his fellow firefighter.