Parent of the Year Award Application

So, I'm outside with my two-year-old the other day. He's great. I'm trying to do some yard work -- pullin' weeds, puttin' up flower fences so the irises don't droop, weed whackin', layin' down mulch in the garden, that sort of thing. I call him "Pig Will" from this old story by Richard Scarry about "Pig Will and "Pig Won't", where Pig Won't is the kid who won't do anything his parents say -- won't help out, won't do chores, won't go with Dad to work on the boat and just sits around and gets bored while good 'ol Pig Will does all of this, has a great time with Dad working on the boat and at the end of the day gets an ice cream treat. At the end, Pig Won't learns his lesson and becomes "Pig Me Too!"

Anyway, my two-year-old is a little Pig Will -- anything I ask he shrugs his shoulders and says "OK" and off we charge. He's a good kid and a tough one -- he rarely complains, and doesn't 'sweat the small stuff' as my Dad would say. So I'm getting ready to haul 40 lb. bags of mulch across the yard to the garden, so I plop him down on the rock bed by the side of the house by a strange toy that involves pushing boats and water and little spinning wheels and set to work.

I walk by with the first couple bags and he's playing just fine. Drop the bags, trudge back, think about how I should be using a wheel barrow, pick up two more bags and trudge along. Pig Will is still playing, but he's shifting around a bit. Wonder if he needs a diaper. Mental note -- check later. Drop bags, trudge back. Pig Will is waving his arms, but this is nothing unusual for a two-year-old. Who knows what's on his mind? I sling another bag over my shoulder and trudge back to the garden. Now Pig Will is grunting, still waving his arms. His voice is starting to sound like a kind of whimper, or something. Never heard that particular sound before, actually.

Now, my little guy is a pretty good talker, so when he grunts and whimpers and waves his arms, well ... it's time to go back to the garden and drop off another bag and see how he is when I get back. So I do, and he's still doing it -- the whimpering, the grunting, the waving of arms, the confused and possibly horrified expression. Something clicks in the parental part of my brain -- perhaps I should check this out!

I bend down and look at him, and he looks up at me sadly and says, "Ahh!". Oh, hey, there, I say, it's okay!

Then I notice an ant on his leg. Actually, a couple ants. I brush them off. "It's okay -- it's just a couple ants! Brush, brush, brush!" Then I notice the ants on his other leg. And another crawling on his foot. "Ooh...lots of ants...wow...it's okay. Brusha brusha." And I brush them off his other leg.

But I'm starting to get a feeling that there's a theme at work here, which is when I notice about a dozen ants on his overall shorts, two on his left hand, a few more on his right arm and one on his forehead. Wow, I think. That's a lot of ants. That's when I decide to pick up Pig Will and see what's going on here. And then I say it aloud: "That's a lot of ants!"

Because it was a lot of ants. Where Pig Will had been sitting were about half dozen very large little sandpiles with holes in the middle -- ant hills -- hundreds of ants swarming about, no doubt in a frenzy over the giant diapered create sitting atop their homes. It's at this point that I realize that the giant diapered creature had been mostly stoically enduring a swarm of dozens of ants crawling over his entire body -- up and down his legs and arms and even under his shirt.

"Wow, kiddo," I say. I call him kiddo sometimes. "You've got ants all over you!"

"Yeah," he says. "Ants. On my legs."

"Yeah, and on your nose...beep, beep. Let's get these ants off of you. Do you like ants on you?"

"Nooooo."

"Yeah. Daddy sat you down on an ant hill. Sorry 'bout that."

"Yeah," he says, giving me a very stern look as I peek down his diaper to be sure I haven't missed any stray ants. "I don't like ant hills."