Max, the Mud One

Today, on this fine, spring-like day we got out the rakes.  I’ve found yard work to be a great way to get my little boy human (age 3) outside.  (Less so for my bigger boy human, then or now.)

Max says, “Mom, can I rake the mud?”  “Sure,” I reply, as I rake oak leaves from the vinca before it begins to bud.  And he rakes happily for some time.  “Mom, I’m the ‘mud one’; you’re the ‘leaf one’.”  I like the sound of that.

A little while later: “Mom, can I have my work gloves?”  So we go to the shed for the work gloves and then get back to work.

A few seconds later: “Mom, can I have my blue shovel?”  (I kid you not, every sentence out of his mouth begins with the word “Mom”.)  I don’t really want to search for the little blue trowel.  Luckily, I’ve just spotted the little red shovel, which spent all winter in the vinca bed.  This satisfies him, and he meanders somewhere to get a large dump truck.

Now he’s happily shoveling dirt and decomposed wood chips into his dump truck and driving it over to me.  “Mom, I brought you some more mud,” he says proudly as he dumps.  “Fabulous!” I reply as if I want that mud in the middle of the rock path.  But check it out: This little boy of mine shovels til the sun goes down!

Aside: We’ve found that child-sized tools make yard work much more fun.  Now the small humans can be like the full-sized humans they so admire.  Yard sales (and the mother-in-laws who shop them) are good sources for little rakes, gloves, shovels, and wheelbarrows.  The cool, bamboo-looking rake came from forsmallhands.com        

Also helpful, if you’re actually trying to get yard work done is an implausible tolerance for interruptions.