Helping Daddy Out: Part 2

As my retaining wall project continues Alyce is finding new ways to help me.  Earlier she helped me drive some pegs into the ground and today she helped me shovel dirt.  I spent almost the entire afternoon preparing the trench that the wall will rest within.  Towards the end just before dinner Mom was outside with Luke for a feeding.  While feeding Luke Mom commented that he was watching me go about my excavation.  I said back to her that "he should come help me shovel".  Alyce must have heard me and thought that I needed some help shoveling and immediately ran up to me telling that she could do it!  I handed Alyce my shovel and said "go for it".  She picked up my shovel got a bit of dirt in the pan and did her best to try and deposit the cargo into the bucket I've been using to put the dirt into a pile.  What she lacked in shoveling capacity she more than made up for it with cuteness!

After a bit Alyce got bored or tired of using the big shovel and asked to use her blue shovel.  Alyce has an entire set of play yard tools and a blue shovel is one of the implements.  Mom grabbed it from the garage, handed it to Alyce, and she started helping me again.  Alyce also grabbed her own orange bucket to hold the dirt rather than my own 5 gallon bucket.  Alyce would take two shovel fulls of dirt and put them into her orange bucket, walk to the dirt pile, and dump the contents onto the pile.  She probably moved about 3 cubic inches with every bucket but as long as she kept out from underneath my shovel I didn't mind and enjoyed her company.

After a while she even got bored of helping me shovel and moved onto something new, the dirt pile.  If there is one constant in the universe it is that kids like to climb dirt piles.  I am really surprised that it took Alyce almost a week to attempt to climb up the pile of dirt on the patio but today her streak ended.  She made a few probing climbs to get used to how the dirt shifts but eventually she made an attempt at the summit and got about 3/4s the way up.  I thought this was really cute, but I couldn't let it continue more than a few times since I needed to get back to work and I couldn't leave her unattended on such an unsettled surface.  Of course this led to some tears but Alyce got over it and I finished up my digging for the day.