Little Person, Big Words

The other day, Thomas and I were outside in the front yard doing some landscaping. I was finally going to fix the bricks that were all messed up. I was not looking forward to doing this project. I figured the way to get motivated would be to at least pull up all the bricks that needed to be fixed. Even if I didn't get to lay them all back down right away, they would be sitting in the front yard staring at me every time I went out there. And that would drive me crazy enough to finally get it done.

Let me explain something about these bricks. We have a circular driveway. Our front yard is not even remotely landscaped yet. Last spring, I painstakingly laid each brick around the circular drive. This took me several days. I am a perfectionist and I just kept going out there to make sure that each brick was "just right."

Fast forward to last fall. The city was finally installing the sewer lines to our house. We had been on septic (which, by the way, we were perfectly content with). However, it was mandatory that the city come crush our septic system and hook us up to the city sewer line. So in the process of installing this sewer line, they pulled up half of my bricks in the front yard. They were supposed to put everything back the way they found it. Well, they did lay the bricks back down, but they looked awful. I was really upset, but since I am not one for confrontation, I just complained incessantly to my husband about how unhappy I was. Well, Aaron is good about confronting people, and he marched right outside and told them to redo the bricks. I have to admit, they looked better, but were not exactly as I would have liked them. I had no interest in relaying those bricks though, so I let it go.

Enter the present time. The bricks not only looked bad, they were now falling over. The nice men that installed our sewer somehow did not get the bricks in the ground correctly and with the rain, etc. they were tipping over. They looked awful, so it was time to take action. I was dreading this task.

Thomas and I were out front getting ready to pull up the bricks. I was having a hard time getting them up. So, Thomas says to me, "Pull really hard Mommy, you can do it." It was really funny because he was saying all this while trying to pull a brick out himself and he was really straining when he was telling me. I kept digging and pulling up each brick, getting more and more irritated that I should even have to do this project at all.

Thomas just looked at me and says, "Mommy, you are doing a GREAT job."

This may not sound like much, but first of all, he has never said this to me before. He hears it from me all the time, but I have never heard it from him. It was the best encouragement I could have gotten to finish my project.

The bricks, however, I have to say are not perfect, but they will have to do.