The Little Hammer That Could

My son went to a friend's house around the corner for a play date last week.   While he was there, the other two boys brought out their tool boxes and all three went down the hill behind the houses to do what I will stereotypically call, "boy things."  

They hammered on trees, they jabbed at roots and rocks with screwdrivers and they planned on felling several large, mature trees with arsenal of odds and ends in their tool boxes.   In short, they were having a great time.

I came home and thought how fun it would be to get my son a tool box and put some things in it for him to use.   I told both grandfathers and they plan on bringing some old things from their garages when they visit next.  In the meantime, I stopped at Lowes and got a very inexpensive, small tool box on the way home from an errand.  

I got a cheap, light mallet for him that I thought would be useful and then, on the way out, I walked by a display selling wooden car kits.    My son isn't up to the wooden car age yet, but I did see a child-sized hammer in the display that looked just my son's size.  

I got home with the tool box and the hammer and today I showed it to my son.  He ran outside and promptly used his new tools in the muddy plant bed my neighbor had spent all morning planting.   I directed him to the back yard and in short order, he and his friend, Rayan, were doing things with those tools—noisy things.

I was working inside on a computer thing that was fiercely holding my attention, but I went out from time to time to see what the commotion was.    Let me tell you, a tiny hammer in the hands of a small human being, does no less a hammer make.     There was destruction.

I had to redirect them multiple times because, hey, breaking two bricks into bits wasn't fun enough, they were planning on moving on to the remainder of the brick pile.  There were dents in things there should not have been dents in and one part of my husband's forge had an "invisible, unexplainable, no one did it" kind of accident happen to it.   Yeah...

Next time the tool kit comes out (which probably will be tomorrow,) I am going to have to be in a more watchful, advisory role it appears.

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked today if we knew what is favorite Transformer was.   We said we didn't know and found out it was Bumblebee.   He asked then if we knew who his second favorite Transformer was and again, we didn't know.  (Turns out it was Optimus Prime.)  He asked again, using the word, "third."   I wondered how far up he knew when he asked about his fourth favorite Transformer.   He got distracted with some food, but came back in a minute, asking about his sixth favorite.   Children absorb the most amazing pieces of information when you're not even trying for them to.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I called my mother the other day and asked my daughter if she wanted to talk to her.   She said she did.   I handed her the phone—on speakerphone as always—and my daughter took the phone and tried to hook it into the collar of her shirt.   To free up my hands, I hook the phone into my collar and put it on speaker phone.   It was very cute watching her talk to Mimi with the phone hanging down from he little shirt.