Donné and Grace went to the mall to get a few things for school, Adam slept, and Eli and I had gardening tasks to do. Our window of opportunity to get through as much as possible was very small, as Adam could wake at any time, bringing gardening to a stand still.

As soon as Adam was asleep I quickly gathered the gardening implements and decided we should start by raking up the leaves on the lawn.

I start raking, and Eli rakes for a very short while. “We need to make a list dad.” “My boy, I’ve got a list in my head. We need to rake, sort out the compost, mow the lawn and if there is time empty the jacuzzi.” “Need to make a list.” I’m thinking, how can I avoid having to go and get paper and a pen, “Can I make a list on my phone?” He was fine with that, so we made a quick list.

Rake, rake.

“Need my own list daddy.” Off he goes, and comes back with one of the phones from his tool box, “Look, I make my own list!”

In the mean time, I’m trying to get things moving and have been raking while he went to make his list. Eli evaluates the situation, “You’ve been raking up my leaves! You have to rake your leaves!” He then swooshes all the leaves in the one pile around so that he can rake up his leaves. Okay, not going to fight this, but we need to keep moving.

Rake, rake, with Eli singing, “Rake, ho, rake, rake ho!”

“You’re a Farmer Daddy! And I Eli Farmer.” From this point in the gardening tasks I am now known as “Farmer Daddy.” No problem, let’s keep moving before the baby wakes up.

Once he had settled in, things went a bit faster. He was quite disappointed when he tried to mow the lawn with his toy mower and nothing happened, so we worked together with the mower, and he even had a chance to do some mowing on his own – fortunately push mowers are relatively child friendly.

End result: leaves raked, compost sorted, lawn partially (very partially) mowed, and we both had some fun together (fortunately there wasn’t much of an agenda).