Dirt

I’ve been looking outside longingly for the last week or two. I’ve noticed weeds are starting to grow in our yard. Now, you wouldn’t think weeding would be all that exciting…and I’m sure I will tire of it soon enough, but I’ve really been wanting to get out there and weed the yard. My yard. It’s a new thing for us to have a yard, and I was mostly just excited to have a place for the boys to run around, but there is another joy in a yard…in taking care of it. So I wanted those weeds gone.

Saturday we were busy all day, but Sunday it didn’t rain, and the Elias went out to play baseball so I suited Simon up in his coat and shoes, and we went out to play as well. Our grass is like a mud bath right now so Simon promptly got his cute overalls all muddy. I guess I’ll get good with mud stains.

I got my trowel and some gardening gloves and a bag for my yard waste, and got to work on the weeds. Weeding is not something I’ve done much of in my life. Hopefully I didn’t take out any real plants. But I have to say that the areas I worked on do look much nicer.

Soon after I started weeding, Simon followed me. He sat down, grabbed a large handful of top soil, and put it in his mouth. He spit it out, and studied his muddied hand for awhile before Nathan came over to rescue him. Like the good little boy Simon is, he went in for a second handful just to be sure it actually did taste horrible. All I could think about during the whole thing was how glad I was that he even has the opportunity to eat dirt…something he never had a chance to do in the condo. Does that make me a bad mom?

Nathan soon took Simon inside to clean up and get a diaper change. I continued with the weeding and listening to the plink of Elias’ balls flying off the tee. Eventually, he lost interest because I wouldn’t come play with him, and came to see what I was doing. I tried to show him how to pull up the weeds, roots and all, but he was more interested in digging. He just dug and dug in that dirt, and I was so happy. I couldn’t have cared less about how dirty he got (he actually stayed pretty clean considering). I was just so happy to be working in our yard, my son joining me “working” with the dirt.

Of course the rain came eventually and ended our fun. But I’m sure there will be plenty more dirt in our future.