“Exca”

We don’t watch much TV at our house. Very little in fact. We watch the Bronco games, often we record it and fast forward through most of it. And then Clint and I will watch Master Chef and Biggest Loser, but other than occasionally (like once every two weeks) turning on the news while getting dinner ready our TV stands silent. My boys don’t know what cartoons are, and Leighton has heard about Spider Man and Bat Man at preschool from his friends but is clueless otherwise as to who they actually are.

Instead one of our favorite things for entertainment is to watch the construction trucks that are building houses in our neighborhood. My boys could sit for hours and watch them, they even like them in the evening after the workers have gone home and the trucks are silently parked. Seriously what is better than an excavator or front loader in a little boy’s eyes?

We also have books about construction trucks. For anyone with little boys if you haven’t read “Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site” by Rinker, I highly recommend it. One of the first few words that Caedmon spoke was actually “exca” which stands for excavator. Even when we are in the car and we drive past a tractor working he yells gleefully from his car seat “Exca!” Our sandbox is full of tractors, trucks, and construction vehicles of varying sizes.

My boys may grow up not “in tune” with the culture around them and have no idea what their friends are talking about in reference to pop culture and TV, and I’m OK with that. There is enough out in the world trying to pollute and destroy their minds and enough junk that they are going to come in contact with in their life, if I can protect and guard against it at this stage in their lives I want to. Besides dirt and mud is far cleaner than most of what is out there anyway.