The Day the Digger Came

One day in September, when Eli was gone hiking, I was standing in the kitchen and heard a noise from the basement like that of water gushing onto the floor.  I was doing a load of laundry so I went downstairs to investigate and discovered that, indeed, there was water gushing onto the floor!  The washer was on the spin cycle and all the water exiting from the machine was backing up from a pipe instead of draining down it because, as it turned out, our entire drainage system was having a rebellion.  Our landlord was marvelous and got a plumber in right away who was able to fix the problem temporarily, but who also discovered a bigger problem at hand.  We survived the next several weeks with only minor issues as we waited for an excavation company to do the major job of fixing the major problem.  Then the Day arrived.

Monday was The Day the Digger Came.

To say that our son Caleb was excited would be an understatement.  Nothing could have prepared him for the absolute jubilance of this momentous event.  A digger was in our yard!  AND a dump truck had come to drop it off!  Could the world get any better???

It was big and it was yellow and it was "working hard", a phrase Caleb always associates with machines at the construction site.  Thankfully, the digger didn't dig up our actual yard.  It dug a decent hole in the ground below our deck, where the workers ascertained the broken pipe to be.  They found the pipe in question and replaced what needed to be replaced and our septic system was back in working order before the day was done, which made me very happy.  Caleb, on the other hand, could've cared less about our water predicaments.  I mean, there was a digger at our house!  Did I mention that it was big and yellow and working hard???  Caleb didn't want to leave all the work to the construction guys either.  He found a shovel and started pitching in, as any good digger-loving boy would do :)

As if his life couldn't have gotten any better that day, the workers also invited Caleb to sit in the digger.  They even offered to take him for a ride, but that proved to be a little too much excitement for him to handle.  But sitting and playing in this big machine was enough.  Indeed, it was the apex of his digger experience!

It should be noted that Caleb toted his own digger and dump truck with him throughout the morning.  No man left behind.  Those machines were working hard too :)  Caleb loved watching the big digger as it drove off the trailer attached to the dump truck and he's been practicing with his own machines ever since.

We also discovered a hard hat in the digger.  He wouldn't wear it at first, but then he came around.  He was an official "construction guy", another phrase that's entered his vocabulary recently :)

Eventually Kai joined us too.  He was almost as eager as Caleb.  Almost.  He liked the buttons and knobs and handles even if he didn't want to help dig dirt.

Caleb didn't want to go inside, even when his cheeks were numb with cold and his hands could barely hold the shovel anymore.  He might have had a meltdown, screaming, "Go outside!  Diiiiiggggger!!!!!" when I carried him inside.  He might have asked about the digger the moment he woke up from his nap and stood at the window to watch it the rest of the day.  And he might have slept with his own digger and dump truck that night.  That boy loves big machines!

It was all very exciting.  Caleb had the time of his life on The Day the Digger Came!