This year, for the first time, my wife wants to start a vegetable garden. She has been on a health crusade for the past several months, with green smoothies and organic foods, among other things. Now, she wants to grow our own organic vegetables.
She started some seedlings a few weeks ago: kale, broccoli, carrots, and tomatoes, among other nutritious selections.
This past weekend, with the weather finally warming up, we decided to prepare our garden and transfer the seedlings outside.
Our son was excited to come out and help us. But Kai’s “help” was to throw dirt all over the place and to pour water where we did not want any. So, we pointed him away from us and told him to go dig some holes by himself.
As my wife and I got busy with the planter boxes and soil, we didn’t pay attention to what he was doing. But, after awhile, he came back over to us and asked if we liked hot fudge sundaes. I looked up. He had put a scoop of mud on the top of his head. And the smile on his face told us how proud he was of his creation.
I looked back over to where he had been digging. He had poured water on the dirt and created a mud hole where there used to be a few tulips. And, when he had finished showing us the “hot fudge sundae” on his head, he went right back to his mud hole. He looked as comfortable as a pig in slop.
When we go to the beach, Kai loves to cover himself with sand. He has sensory needs that are met by the feeling of the sand on his body. And so, I suppose it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that he did the same thing with mud.
His brand new red t-shirt soon became black. You couldn’t tell that he was wearing shoes as they were not seen under the caked-on mud.
He was a happy kid.
Until it was time to go back into the house.
There was no way I was letting him inside with all that mud all over his clothes and body. I got the hose and sprayed him down with water. Kai hates getting water on his face but there was no avoiding it as I tried to get the muck out of his hair. He screamed for me to stop but I continued until it was all washed off.
When I was done, he ran off to be comforted by Mom, telling her how evil Dad was. Perhaps I was, a little bit. But he will think twice next time before creating a mud hole in our flower garden.
Still, he liked it so much. If the vegetables don’t come up, maybe we’ll make a mud pit instead.
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