Monday's Mommy Moment: Gardening?

This weekend was my first attempt at trying some actual gardening and planting with Lil' Lewie.  I bought some Daffodil, Hyacinth, Grape Hyacinth, and Scillas bulbs and made a little sketch as to where I wanted to plant them in the front yard.  As I began to turn over the soil with my shovel (and made sure to give Lil' Lewie his own large plastic shovel too), I lost his attention in less than a minute.

Okay, turning over soil isn't exactly fun, so I prepared him for the next step.  Surely he would love helping me spread some fertilizer and soil in the flowerbeds while planting some of the bulbs.  Well, that didn't go exactly as planned either.  My tiny tot who once loved getting his hands dirty, now, evidently, doesn't like to get his hands dirty at all. 

"Common Lewie.  Now just grab a handful of soil from the bag and sprinkle it here like this," I said with the most encouraging of voices.  "Look how much fun Mommy is having."

He looked at me, looked at the dirt, and then grabbed my hand.

"Lewie, we're going to stay here right now. Okay?"  I tried reasoning with my two year old.

Silly Mommy.  Trying to reason with a two year old is like trying to reason with...um...a rock in the garden.  There is no reasoning.  If my little boy likes what I'm about to say, he's listening, but if I say something that he doesn't like, he ignores me like I don't even exist.   He continued grabbing my hand, this time with a little more persistence.

"Okay, where do you want to take Mommy?" I asked, shrugging my shoulders.

Just like I suspected, he lead me right to his swing set in the yard.  Our gardening experience lasted all of five minutes.  My equipment was spread out everywhere, bags of soil and fertilizer were open and scattered, bulbs were lying in the grass, and I was cajoled by my two year old to drop everything I was doing to push him on the swings and help him on the slide.  When I even suggested that we go back to the front yard to plant, he began to scream, cry, whine, and break out into one of his fairly typical tantrums.

My word of advice to any mommies out there with two year olds or younger is this--if your little one doesn't have a great attention span now, don't even try gardening yet.  There will be plenty of opportunities when they get older (I hope!)

"Look Mom, my hands are dirty!"

"Earthworms...Yuck!"