Digging a big hole

Seems like this should be about so many things, but really it's about Liam's new obsession with digging.

A little background: Mollie the dog digs holes in the yard, for which she gets yelled at. A few weeks ago Grandpa DH and GG's cat escaped the house one night and, you guessed it, came back indoors with dirty paws from digging a hole outside, thus confirming for Liam that the job of all creatures who go outside is to dig holes. And, of course, the city continues to tear the you-know-what out of our street (The latest thing: they've removed all the pavement so now we live on a dirt road. Fun!) and every night parks 2 backhoes, 2 diggers, assorted dump trucks, and lately a grader, steamroller, and street sweeper right in front of our house. So, Liam is interested in digging.

Lately, every night when we get home he says: "out'sie, out'sie, dig . . . a big hole" (very long "o" in "hole"). And off he goes. He likes to pick up the dirt in his hands and put it in the front-end-loader and then transfer it (again by hand) to the dump truck. We have small piles of dirt all over the front walk, the porch, and the back patio. It is starting to get cold in the evening here and Liam's hands turn to little ice cubes. He cries real tears when he is made to come inside for annoyances like dinner, bath time, etc.

Will is still about the same. He says he feels a little better today, maybe. Saturation still in the mid 90s on 4L of O2, so it's stable. We're starting to get the hang of the O2 tubing all over the house and are very grateful that he is at home. Yesterday he sat outside on the back porch for a while and supervised the evening's digging.