I spent the afternoon with my hands in the dirt. It felt so good! Ian was right by my side the whole time. He is a great worker- in fact I am thinking about hiring him out. He is the best room cleaner that I have ever seen- he puts things right back where they belong- no shoving them under the bed. And now I can add weeding to the list of chores that he has mastered in his short life.
We have a small jungle growing in our back yard that gets more unruly each day. So today, after all the rain that we have been having, felt like a good day to 'get to it'. When I work in the yard, I love to have music blasting. But when you weed with Ian, you don't need to turn on a radio at all. He sings little diddys which are quite entertaining and if he is not singing he is asking questions or making comments.
He became fascinated with worms half way through the weeding adventure we were having. He found a few and decided they were 'gross' because they were dirty. He turned on the sprinkler and washed them off. He laid them out on a rock. He studied them closely. He exclaimed, "Mom! I think my worm's heads fell off!" I asked him why he thought that and he said, "Just look at them!" He showed me one worm- up close- and I tried to explain what I could about that worm and why he looked like he had no head. That was a hard thing to do.
Anyway, after awhile, he moved on to other things, leaving me with explicit instructions that I was to yell "woooheee" if I saw another worm for him to add to his worm 'family'. Every other second, he reminded me of what I was to yell if I saw another worm.
After some time, I yelled, "woohee" and he came running. He picked up the worm, and lovingly carried it to his new 'friends' who were now stiff and dried out. 'Poor little fellas', I heard him say as he looked down at the pieces of worm jerky laying on the rock.
He came up to me after a few minutes and said, "I probably miss my worms." That's another one of his unique ways of saying things. Then as he looked down at his only surviving worm, he said, "I wish I could have a sleepover with my worm." "You do? What would you do with your worm at a sleepover?", I asked. "Play with my DS.", he said. "Do worms know how to play DS?", I asked. "I don't think so.", he laughed.
We had many other fascinating conversations while weeding today. I will spare you the details, I just wanted to share why I love weeding with this boy.
Pure entertainment. Plus, he is a hard worker! We filled up our green waste garbage can with weeds today- most of them thrown in by Worm Boy himself. It was a great day!
