Digging for worms, eating Ice cream and Playing checkers

Yesterday, Mason took over my evening. After dinner, which I actually cooked(spaghetti which I thought I could convince my stomach was a good idea but apparently, my stomach is pretty stubborn), I desperately wanted a bowl of Cookies and Cream Ice cream with milk poured over it. Does that sound gross? Because it's not. Not at all. It's like milk shake. Anyway, as any mother of a four year old knows, ice cream can not be served to one without serving it to all. So, I dished us out two bowls of ice cream and sat there at the table enjoying it. We just sat there talking about our days and random things. It is so crazy to have a conversation with a four year old. Some things they say make absolutely no sense. Others are so profound - "God must have spilled a lot of water up in heaven because he knew daddy needed the grass to grow."

After our ice cream, I retreated to the couch because, still, food doesn't always settle that well. Mason went outside to "do something." A few minutes later with this little grin of desperation, he comes back in - oh, you have to know what he is wearing - a green shirt that can "get diwty", football underwear, and brown dress shoes. That's it. So cute. Anyway, he comes in and says, "Mom, pleeeease can you come outside really quickly to see sumthin?" Well, of course I had to say yes. So we go outside, he hands me a shovel and says, "We're diggin' for worms." And he proceeds to drag me by the hand to the best worm diggin' spots in our yard. So that's what we did. I would dig for a while and if a worm happened to wiggle to the surface, Mason, with extreme giddiness, plucks him from the soil and puts him in a clear cup with his other finds. I am not a huge fan of worms or any wiggly, slimy creature, but he kept trying to get me to hold one. I kept telling him no because they were gross, etc. and he kept saying, "But momma, I promise they are not gross and they don't bite at all." I finally just lied and told him the worm germs would be bad for the baby. I know. I am terrible. After we had caught 4-5 worms, we went inside where Mason decided it was necessary to unearth all the worms from his cup and put them on a piece of paper in his room. So he did. At one point I was helping him dig out a particularly long and fat worm. I absentmindedly, in helping him, laid my leg down on the paper full of worms. Well, when I lifted my leg up they all stuck to it. Mason panicked when he didn't see the worms on his paper and nearly burst into tears and starting yelling at Maggie,our dog, for eating the worms. Then I saw the pile of slimy worms stuck to my leg and let out a shriek that I am sure the neighbors heard and started flinging worms in every direction. Mason who was now aware of what was happening, started to cry because I "didn't like his worms and I had killed them all." I started laughing because it was all just so funny and then tried to tell him, without touching the worms, that I did like the worms and it just scared me to have them stuck to my leg. I then pointed out that they were all still wiggling and therefore they were alive. I finally convinced him that I didn't hate his worms and he forgave me, but more importantly I convinced him that we should let the poor worms rest and that we were definitely should not cut them up for when he and dad go fishing. Poor little worms.

After the worm excitement, Mason taught me how to play checkers. I get red. He gets black. We pile them in front of us and then takes turns throwing checkers at each others piles. If we hit any, we get to keep them. We play until, well, I don't know when because he kept changing the rules until I told him it was bed time.

Man, what a night.