tractor

Today I realised I have little boys. Okay, I did know this before and I’ve even had similar revelations in the past, but this morning I had an all new insight into the mind of small male beings.

As always, I had this feeling whilst in my car, driving to work. I was singing along to an old favourite (seriously days of old – and I’m sure only Josie can guess what it is), tapping on the steering wheel. Having a moment and a half, thinking about how much I hated getting up in the middle of the night to roll up the windows on my car during one hell of a storm, and simultaneously how grateful I was for having done it – and then I saw it.

I wanted to scream out, “boys look!!!!”, but of course they weren’t in the car and even if they had been, the “it” passed so quickly, I would have had to explain it for another 15 minutes or so! The “it” was a blue tractor with white trim! Oh holy excitement! And it looked just like the toy blue tractor with white trim that the boys have in their toy box – although it has to be said that the tractor on the road was probably cleaner than the one in the toy box.

What is completely amazing about this experience is not the fact that I saw a tractor that looks just like a toy, but the fact that I saw a tractor and I wanted to play with it. I am not kidding you, I wanted to play with the tractor. And if I couldn’t play with the big one, well I wanted to get down on the floor and make vrrrrooom vrrrooommmmm noises as I pushed my little play tractor on the floor.

Needless to say, this feeling only lasted for a few seconds and I was pulled back into my song, tapping my fingers until I arrived a minute later in the parking lot at work, but the joy of understanding my little ones for just a second, just one tiny moment in time is priceless. The big test is when I get home from work and tell them – oh should I tell them I understand? Nah, I’ll just keep being mommy, dancing in the car, buffing their nails, never telling them that I’ve got the upper hand. I’ll play with the tractor after they go to bed. And maybe tomorrow I’ll pass a flash car and decide I want to play with one of those as well….