Digger, Backhoe, Trencher, whatever.

My boys have one obsession: trucks.  They are usually doing one of these things:
1. Playing with our fleet of toy trucks and vehciles
2. Watching "Mighty Machines," the 39 episode series on Netflix about every kind of truck you can imagine.
3. Reading books about trucks.  M makes a beeline for the "Tonka" paperbacks when we visit the library. I made a rule that we can only check out hardcover books because of it!
4. Looking for and identifying trucks, sometimes educating me about trucks!

Come to find out, our new house is well situated for doing just that.  We live across the road from an AT&T building, where dozens of work trucks pull in and out of every day.  We also live across the street from a school bus stop, so we get to see the kids get on and off every day.  We also live one block from the City Hall and Police Station, where all of the police and city vehicles also live!

Yesterday was the first day in well over a week it was nice enough to go outside, so when C woke up the boys wanted to go for a walk.  They'd spied two - count them, TWO! - Consumer's Energy cherry picker trucks parked in the city hall lot and one of them was pulling a trailer containing a "digger." (More on that, later.)

So we went.  And we met two of the nicest grandpa-type guys who were very happy to chat with my almost four year olds at the end of their lunch break.  M was bursting with excitement, asking endless questions and touching everything!  N was shy - he was frightened by the horn the driver so kindly blew for the kids.  To make up for it, I think, he went to the back of his truck and produced 3 rolls of colorful electrical tape - one roll for each kid - to decorate their rides! 

There is much kindness in the world, still. 

One of M's questions was about the trailer hauling what I so erroneously called a digger.  M very sternly informed me that it's a BACKHOE, MOM!  I knew he was right - I remembered the page in the truck book identifying the different TYPES of diggers, but I have no room in my brain to store and retrieve such useless (to me) information.  Then our friend told us it was a "trencher," which, I suppose must be a subcategory of backhoe, which is a type of digger, of course. 

I'm sure M will use that information against me next time we spot a trencher.

I suppose now it will take 30 years to be smarter than my kids again, when they finally have children of their own.

I tried to find an image online of what we saw (because I didn't want to be that weird lady yesterday...I try to take time off from that) but this is as close as I could find.  See how it looks like a little bulldozer with an attachment?  Could you possibly call this a bulldozer?  Can you see how I might not have said "trencher?" at first?  Back me up here.   


And one more thing...M saw the "construction cake" image I posted to Pinterest because I am also planning the twins' party and thought it was a cute cake.  He won't stop talking about it.  Here's the image...cute, right?


 So I looked up the directions...um, no.  This person must have a PHD in cakes...she's all dying the cake with black and yellow gel and slicing and reassembling to make the insides construction stripes.  I like Pinterest when it doesn't make me feel completely inferior.  As in, I could just put the toy on top of the cake with a pile of Oreos, right?  There I go, trying to skate by with my "digger" attitude again...