Paul and the Family

The theme of Adam’s life lately seems to be “I’m a big boy too! I want to do big boy things just like big brother!” Truth be known, since he was just a few months old I have noticed him watching his big brother, anxious for the day when he can tear around the house and play with big things too. Now that he is starting to walk (something he is very determined to do) he has grown even more impatient about this. I guess he is starting to get a taste of what it will be like to be free and mobile, and he probably assumes that means he can do what he wants, too.

For example, a few days ago we were visiting the construction site for the Sacramento Temple. (Kelli’s dad is the architect for the temple, so he got us onto the site.) The workers were nice to us, and they even took Brian for a ride in one of the huge earth-mover trucks that they weren’t using for real work at the time. Luckily Adam was content to just watch the machines in that case. But a little later things would change…

We were looking at the area where the temple would be situated. At that point was still just dirt — they were excavating the basement but the part we were looking at wouldn’t have a basement, so we were on ground level. Near what we will be the north end of the temple there was a trench dug in the ground, about 20 feet long by five feet wide, and about 2-4 feet deep depending on which edge you were next to. Being the three-year-old that he is, Brian started bending over and picking up dirt clods and throwing them into the trench. To Adam, who was in my arms at the time, that just looked like too much fun. He started struggling to get out of my arms, and I could just see on his face that he wanted some “big boy fun” too, so I put him down (and stood close by to make sure he didn’t fall into the trench). Sure enough, he bent over, picked up a small dirt clod, and mustered up all his one-year-old strength to throw that clod into the trench. The dirt didn’t actually make it into the trench (he was a couple feet back from the edge) but he didn’t care — as soon as he had thrown it he stood up and beamed at mom, as if to say “look what I did! I did the big boy thing too!” It is cute and fun (although certainly difficult, too) to see how much he wants to be grown up.