“I hope we find dinosaur bones,” D added.

“Do you want to come dig too?” C asked.

I told him I’d be out in a bit.

“Okay,” C said, “but you better bring some food and a drink of water, cause it is going to take a while.”

This morning, after speech therapy, they went out for some digging time. This time when I checked on them, D explained their scheme to me and showed me how they were going to fit both of them in the hole by making it bigger, and demonstrated how big it was going to be.

“Nice,” I said.

“There is one problem, Mommy,” D added. “How are we going to get back out of the hole?”

I suggested ladders. D was not impressed but decided it was good enough for now. “Okay. We are only digging until we hit lava.”

“We want to see what color lava really is,” C put in.

After Cub Scouts, they went back out to continue their excavations. This time I brought a blanket to sit and watch the proceedings. They showed me how deep they were (about a foot), and how big the hole was (maybe 6 inches across) and explained they were having problems because they kept hitting roots and metal.

“It is probably pipes,” C said wisely.

“It better not be pipes. It’s probably a rock,” I said.

“No, it sounds like metal. I think it’s pipes. We just have to get past them.”

“Below that there is sand. And then crabs. Crabs make holes in the sand, and that keeps the beach nice,” D informed me, and demonstrated with his hands the shape crabs make in the sand.

“There aren’t any crabs down there,” I told him. “Just clay probably.”

“Clay!” C said, laughing at this ridiculous suggestion. “There is a rock layer that is like a thousand percent thick! We are going to need a jackhammer.”

“Yeah, a jackhammer,” agreed D.

I examined the hole again. There were a LOT of roots. “You know, you’d hit less roots if you weren’t digging right next to the trees. Why don’t you dig over there in the middle of the yard?”

“No, that is where I planted my orange seed,” C said, but they decided to move over to the middle of the yard near where he planted the orange seed. I explained to them about backfill and helped them fill in the first hole, then went back to my blanket while they discussed their strategy for the new hole.

“There are a lot of plants here,” D called to me.

“It’s just grass and weeds,” I told him. “Dig through them and you’ll get to the dirt.”

“And then the lava,” he said with relish, and went back to digging.

D, eyeing the skillet suspiciously: “What is that?”

Me: “It’s a tomato cream sauce. It’s yummy.”

D: “I will have my noodles plain.”

They never want sauce. I don’t know why I bother, except that I don’t want to eat plain noodles so at least That Man and I can eat the sauces I make. So I finished making dinner and called them in to have each of them try a single noodle (I had made some fusilli for them, because I knew they were going to balk at noodles with SOMETHING INSIDE THEM) with the sauce on it. D acted as if he were being force-fed rotted horsemeat and told me he hated it. C chewed his up with remarkable lack of ceremony, then informed me he’d have to think about it when asked his opinion. A few minutes later when I asked if he wanted his noodles plain or with sauce, he asked for plain. Le sigh.

So I added three tortellini a piece to their bowls of plain pasta (I despair of them, really) for them to try it. It has cheese in it. They like cheese, of almost any variety, as long as it comes shredded. I didn’t point it out to them, in hopes they would just eat it without noticing. But then D wandered past me with Nintendo DS in hand and paused in front of me.

D: “Those noodles you made? The new ones?”

Me: “The tortellini?”

D, gesturing emphatically and making a face as if I had gotten a really unfortunate perm: “They were bad. You should not make them again.”

Me: “Oh, come on. You guys never like anything, you suck.”

D: “I will never eat those noodles.”

Now, the spider is a toy tarantula made out of squishy and slightly sticky stuff, meant to be thrown at windows and fall down in a way that approximates climbing. It is nearly life-size and accurately colored. It looks pretty real if you just catch a glance of it.

I told C, “You can bring it in, but you can’t throw it.”

C assured me he would only toss it from hand to hand lightly, and not at anything.

So in we went, and they sat down near the front door and I looked for the fabric for about two minutes. They were very quiet and when I didn’t see anything like what I needed, I said, “Let’s go to the next store, guys.”

“Um, okay,” said C, “but first I need my spider.” And he pointed up at the ceiling. The spider was directly above the cutting table, stuck with his belly to the ceiling, perched like a real spider. We waited a few minutes, but the spider – contrary to its past behavior – stuck firm and did not fall down.

I looked up at the spider and debated leaving it behind. But I knew C would be devastated, and there was a strong possibility that one of the shop ladies would look up and not realize it wasn’t real and have a heart attack. My heart jumped a bit when I looked up and saw it, and I knew it was fake. Seeing a palm-sized spider straight above you is enough to give anyone pause.

So I asked one of the shop ladies – three of them were fluttering around the UPS man at the time – if they had a broom or something, because my son had thrown his toy spider at the ceiling and gotten it stuck. She looked up, clutched her chest a bit, and said, “I’m glad you warned me it was a toy.”

The shop stepladder was duly brought out, along with a yardstick, and we poked at the spider. It rolled over but stayed stuck where it was.

“You need to get up there and grab it,” the UPS man put in. We all looked up at the ceiling, which was still far overhead even from the top step for any of us. He grinned and climbed up himself, standing on tiptoe at the top step, and was just able to grab it with his fingertips while the shop ladies twittered about caution and their liability.

“Usually it falls right down,” C remarked as the spider was handed back to him.

The shop ladies, who now were all smiles since no one had fallen off the ladder, laughed indulgently at this. “It must like acoustic ceiling tiles!” one said. “You can tell all your friends.”

The spider rescued, apologies and thanks given out liberally, we left the shop with C clutching his spider and grinning widely. I’m sure it was a huge adventure to him, but I may not be able to show my face in that quilt shop again.

As we got in the car, I told C the spider wasn’t allowed in stores anymore. “Yeah,” he agreed, “Cause it sticks really good to acoustic ceiling tiles.”

D: “I am building the Titanic, but I need my brother to help me. Of course, it is a two person job.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45QyOlJXT4M

Nearly a year later (August 2010). C reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuiL7Ea8fo4

Nearly a year later again (July 2011). C and D swimming in the pool. C is the one who says “it’s cold underwater”, so you can really measure the speech difference in him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_0Rycm930

And in August 2011, C again reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTeBhewkYGQ

A hen and ten eggs are on a spaceship. A missile coming out of nowhere hits them in the back of their spaceship.

The spaceship crashes on an empty planet that has a house. Ten more eggs were in the house. The hen moved the house to the eggs.

The hen pulled the house with a long chain, and put all the eggs in the house. Two more hens come and ten more eggs are being carried by one hen, with help by the other hen.

And they all lived perfect in the house together.

The planet had a waterfall. It had a river and they named the planet Earth.

That’s what happened.

The end.