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July 19, 2004
Playing at Work
WildChild was getting a little bored Saturday afternoon, and I'm a firm believer that a busy child is a less-likely-to-get-into-trouble child. So he & I hooked up the trailer to the lawn tractor and set about moving some pea gravel from the front drive around to the front porch landing. (That's one of his favorite places to play with his trucks, so the gravel cover was getting a little thin)
After enthusiastically shoveling gravel into the trailer for quite a while (and even getting a couple of handfuls in the trailer), he complained "Ma, dis make my back hurt." "Me too," I said. "Think we have enough gravel?" "Yeah!" he replied, and we hauled it around to the front.
With a little help from Pa with a stuck dump lever, we dumped the gravel out into two little piles and WildChild hopped off to survey our handiwork. After a little muttering and arranging, he stuck a stick in each gravel pile and proclaimed them castles. Then he set about destroying them both with his front-end loader and truck. (An equal opportunity Vishnu you might say)
He happily played hard for an hour or so destroying and rebuilding his 'castles', with an occasional timeout for equipment maintenance....and then he was more than ready for supper, a quick bath and bedtime.
And I got the gravel moved and spread with very little effort on my part....thanks to the Tom Sawyer method of lawn maintenance.
Work smarter, not harder I always say.
Posted by Rita at July 19, 2004 08:04 AM
Comments
I love these stories. And the pictures are great.
Posted by: Keith at July 19, 2004 08:55 AM
Thanks! Glad you like them. I've also got the cutest video clip of his triumphant military march ("Look Ma, I marching!") through the ruins of the defeated castles, but alas not enough bandwidth to host it.
He was cracking me up. I wish I had half his energy.
Posted by: rita at July 19, 2004 09:31 AM