I suppose I should have seen it coming. We went to half priced books after dinner one night and they had a little Thomas train video that we didn’t have. It involved a mud pit and a back hoe, front loader, dump truck, and a bulldozer. Connor decided he loved this video for several reasons. 1. Because now he “needed” to have Jack the bulldozer and Alfie the back hoe. 2. He thought the mud splashing was funny. 3. He already has several dump trucks in the back yard and has been pushing those around for over a year. 4. Did I mention the mud?
We haven’t had any rain here in a couple of months so there have been no puddles or mud. We’ve been on watering restrictions and the ground really soaks it up. However, (as with most government regulations) there was an unintended consequence to making me change my watering from 2 days to 1 day. I merely doubled the length of time on my sprinkler systems. This means the ground can’t soak it up like half the time twice a week. Plus, remember that new play scape? Well, because the ground wasn’t level before we leveled it and brought in some dirt to build up the sides and provide a slope rather than a steep drop off. It hasn’t been completed.
Any of you who have read my Christmas letters know that I almost always have a project of some sort going on. And 90% of the time it was done by a very good friend of mine (whose name I won’t mention to protect the guilty). This friend can do some pretty amazing things, has a very diverse skill set and a lot of resources with different skill sets as well. But if he tells you he’ll be there at a certain time, he may not even show up that day. If he tells you that by a certain date you’ll be done, he may not even take your call for a week. So Nita and I have had some wonderful debates around retail cost for reliable timely projects and the friend rates for more, let’s just call it flexible scheduling. J We have since decided that real emergency projects or things that can’t afford to linger have to be farmed out to other people. We categorize them as need to haves and nice to haves. Friend doesn’t get the need-to business anymore. Anyway, the last part of our play scape plan was to put some grass down on the dirt that was spread on the slope.
Connor loves dirt, sand and rocks. But he really LOVES dirt! He can play in it with his shovel, a dump truck, a cup, hands, feet, you name it. He channels his inner Huck Finn and just goes crazy. Josie just sits in her little swing and watches him and giggles and points.
So back to the watering. Friend was also supposed to repair the irrigation system by raising the cannon in one of the zones that previously serviced where the play scape was. Well that cannon was covered by dirt and I couldn’t wait three weeks to water my yard. SOOOOOOO I ran the sprinklers and doubled the time. This created a trench about two feet deep and ten feet long. At the bottom of the trench was a mud pit. I discovered the mud pit about 10 minutes after Connor did. I was doing something else in the back yard and when I went to see him I just almost fell over laughing. Also, that morning he was watching the Cat in the Hat. The episode was a lesson in doing a forward roll or a somersault. So of course he had to try it…in the mud. Then his shoes got stuck, so he just unfastened the Velcro and stepped out of them.
The next day he said he needed a big back hoe. I took him to Toys R us and he picked out a nice green John Deere. So he’s been living the dream back there. And then it hit me. With all his die cast trains, videos, technology, robotics, and remote controls, my son just loves dirt. He loves playing in the pea gravel and shoveling dirt.
I guess some of my country upbringing was genetic. Because I was telling mom about this and showing her the pictures and she said I would spend hours digging a trench, filling it with water and then setting up 100 army men for a full scale assault. And I’d come into the mud room, well filthy. So although I’ve made some calls to get some grass on top of that dirt, it brought back some fun memories. To be perfectly honest, it is refreshing to hear Connor ask to go outside to play every single day. Even when it’s 104 degrees. And worst case, I just need to turn on the hose for a few minutes for some of that glorious smile inducing mud.
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