Sometimes You Gotta Pay Attention To The Worms

After supper, and about two hours of Little Sprout driving everyone in the house batty, I took my little Barefoot Behind out to the flower beds hoping to get some weeding done. The hostas planted there last year haven't all poked through yet, but I figured I remembered well enough where I planted them. With fingers crossed, I dug in with the Garden Claw, knelt down, and started pulling out ground ivy and dandelions.

Little Sprout, who had accompanied me out into the yard, was inspecting her wading pool. We (shamefully) left it inflated and out in the yard all winter long, and yesterday's rain had deposited a couple inches of water in the bottom. As she was industriously attempting to tip her pool over and dump all the nasty, dirty water, she noticed a little worm crawling around in the bottom of the pool.

Just as an aside, how in the heck do they get in there, anyhow???

She was pretty excited to find the "bug", and for once I thought about it before getting irritated that she was waving a creepy-crawly in front of my face.

So I told her about worms, and made a "bed" in the dirt for her to lay it in. I marvelled at how gentle she was with the squishy, wet little critter. Then she sat on my lap and we watched as the worm calmed down from it's fright, got itself re-oriented, and finally disappeared into the dirt.

It was a good moment, and one that I wouldn't have had if I hadn't taken the time to breathe before reacting. The sweetness of the moment almost makes up for the irritation of having her scream "I DON'T WANNA EAT!!!!!!" at the table for half an hour.

Almost....