Dig A Hole

A couple years ago, Gussie decided he was going to build Mary a tree house. This was the beginning of his obsession with becoming a worker man, so he could amass the skills necessary to build Mary a tree house. When we started talking about what he would actually need to learn to build a treehouse, he decided his current skill set was more suited to building Mary an *underground* treehouse. And ever since then, he and Michael occasionally set about digging an appropriately sized hole for an underground fort.

They have yet to dig a hole large enough to house much of anything, but they manage to at least make a glorious mess each time.

Oh, you know - just three kids digging a hole. And filling it with water. Nothing to see here.

Yes, Edie definitely broke out this face specifically for my camera. Her "who me?" face of supreme innocence is well mastered.

"Look how deep we got the hole now! It's up to Edie's knees!"
Also, where did the boys' shirts go?

I am boy, watch me dig.

Well that escalated quickly.

Do you want to hear the really funny part of this story? Right about this time, I walked past these kids and this mess on my way to the van to go shopping, by myself. I have no idea how Daddy got them cleaned up. I'm guessing Catherine had quite a bit to do with it.

Oh! Side note about the underpants, in case you're wondering why Edie is wearing underpants: A few weeks ago, I was helping her get dressed one morning and she turned away from picking out a pair of pants, looked at me with her head cocked and her hands on her diapered hips and her foot tapping, and declared, "I wish you would buy me some underpants so I could use the potty."

Since we had occasionally talked about using the potty but up to this point she had adamantly refused any encouragement toward giving it a try, I first had to stow away my surprised face, and then we went out and bought the girl some underpants (in much too large size 4T because that is the smallest size I could find, but they have dogs on them, so it's ok). And over the course of a week or so she figured out how underpants and using the potty work, and now for the first time in more than ten years, there are no diapers in our house. (Actually, there probably are some diapers around somewhere still, but they aren't being used.) So it turns out the self-potty-training toddler is not a mythical creature after all.

Oooooor... Edie is really a mythical creature. That explanation makes more sense to me.