Things Malachy Plays: Construction

Even once we found out that we were having a boy, I never, ever imagined I would ever know as much about construction equipment as I now know.

The boy is fanatical about it.  Obsessed.  He can sniff out construction, or heavy machinery like a blood hound.  He can pick out the sound of it amongst all the other noises of downtown.  We spend A LOT of time sitting in front of construction sites watching the work...or as Malachy says, "Watching the wo-mans work." (he still can't get a handle on gender).

Down the street from us, they have been demolishing the hospital for the past couple of months.  We are there at least 2 times a week. The days we are not there, Mal is usually asking, "Is the construction working today?"  Malachy is such a regular on the scene, one of the workers even came out of the site once to talk with him.

"You come here a lot," the man said.  (the guys driving the trucks usually wave at Malachy while he is watching...and I swear, they sometimes put on a show, doing something extra cool, just for his benefit).  This man who came out to talk, operated the loader and Malachy got to ask him how it works.  He can now tell you how to drive a loader.

Malachy at "THE construction"

We also see the construction going on at San Jose State quite regularly.  While the work site there is pretty blocked off, you can see the excavators and cranes looming above the fence.  There are also tons of other vehicles roaming around campus that Malachy loves to see (particularly the cherry pickers and tractors).

While at school, Malachy's main play activity is, yup, you guess it - construction.  They have a back-hoe and a BIG back-hoe and A LOT of sand.  Every day, Malachy tells us about the back-hoe, and then proceeds to ask if either Jake or I have a back-hoe at our school.  Even his teacher is impressed with his knowledge of the trucks.  On a walk at school (which happens to be at San Jose State), Mal was pointing out and naming all of the equipment for the teachers, explaining the difference between an excavator and back hoe loader.

Highly focused on some unloading

When not hanging out at construction sites, Mal spends a big part of his day pretending we are watching the construction.  He got an awesome loader for Christmas, and it is the center of most construction, along with a small plastic dump truck, and a wooden crane/town truck.

It's a ride on toy too

When trying to buy a few minutes one day, we did a search with Mal on you tube for construction videos.  You can find anything on you tube...and usually a lot of it. When we can't get out to see the construction in real life, he is pretty happy to watch a video.  They are all pretty bad. but this one if a favorite.  I hope you will watch so you can have the catchy little song stuck in your head...it's pretty much always stuck in mine.