Panting for Gold

Espen has learned about pirates and treasure and parade candy.

Also, that the three can be effectively packaged to great effect. 

For example. 

We have a sawdust pile in our yard that is both easy to dig in and also relatively clean. Wesp has developed a dear love for getting his kid sized shovel out and zestfully flinging dubiously filled spade-fulls of sawdust into his little red wheelbarrow. 

"Come WORK, mama!" he will yell joyfully, hurling sawdust into the air like a self-generating blizzard.

So I will come and shovel load after load of sawdust into his barrow until he decides there must be something magical in my digging tool that lets me get so much MORE sawdust than he is, and demands to switch.

Now that he knows about pirates digging for treasure, he is shoveling with a PURPOSE. 

"Mama, let's go dig for ARGH, treasure!"

(Thank you pirates and mermaids theatre camp for introducing him to the instant pirate-cred phrase,"Argh")

Around this time period, he also attended the 4th of July parade in Molalla. 

This is an amazing spectacle where people ride longhorn cows with saddles and there are semi-trucks of candy to rain down on the children. 

Neither Espen nor I were expecting this windfall, but fall it did and a month later we are still staggering under the weight of uneaten candy (That's my fault for not letting him have candy every single day.)

I have relocated it several times in an attempt to throw him off the scent, but he is a bloodhound for the Sweet Stuff. 

So when he suggested that we "Dig for treasure" together and meaningfully pointed at the small chest I had a feeling we were in for it.

"Let's dig for THAT treasure there, mama!! ARGH!!!!"

I thought back to my childhood and the treasure lust that possessed me regularly. How many times I had gone hunting for gold with my cousins in the stream by our house. The hours of unmitigated revelry when we thought we'd struck it rich.

"Alright. We can bury the treasure chest."

Espen whooped with glee and began furiously launching sawdust in all directions. I stepped back and waited. He was not impressed.

"Come ON, mama!!! Pant for gold!!!"

I waited on that one, just for a second...channeled my inner pirate and realized that I probably WOULD be panting for gold if I were a pirate and that treasure chest was full of my favorite booty.

"Ok, buddy. Let's pant."

He continued to dig wildly while I started breathing heavily. Espen stared at me.

"Mama. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! DIG!!"

"Buddy, I thought we were panting for gold!"

"WE ARE, MAMA!!! You have to go like THIS."

And he picked up his shovel, took a load of sawdust in it and started shaking it back and forth.

And then I remembered that my mother, his beloved grandma, is the Queen of Treasure Lust. She has been known to take her gold pan with her on camping trips JUST IN CASE she might get lucky. It is also known that she is particularly skilled at getting little kids jazzed about such things.

I looked closely at Espen.

"Espen, where did you learn to pant for gold?"

He didn't miss a beat and just kept swishing his sawdust.

"Grandma, ARGH!! KEEP PANTING!"

And so we did. Until the very last piece of treasure had been exhumed and celebrated.