I realized Saturday that my kids have totally, completely missed out on the childhood I experienced.

A childhood involving worms and dirt and mud and skinned knees, and leathery feet from playing outside barefooted, and muscled-up legs from entire days spent roaming the neighborhood on a bike.

My poor kids.

But that’s all about to change… for the first time since 2005, we have a house in a neighborhood with a real back yard. A yard that backs up to … WOODS. And Saturday we made a new friend.

It began when we were working in the yard, and found this…

Katie Beth wanted no part of it, being the sheltered, pampered, loves-the-indoors city girl that she is, but Annie was feeling bold and adventurous and …. touched it. “He’s made of rubber!” she shrieked.

And after she touched it… she … held it.

Oh yeah. She’s bad to the bone, all right.

“I want to name him….. Lee,” she announced.

“Lee Dirty.”

Lee Dirty was part of our lives only briefly that day — we let him go to do his thing in the dirt — but he made a lasting impression.

We talked about him all weekend; wondered if he had gone to worm church on Sunday morning.

It was the first step in my kids’ de-city-fication process.

Oh yeah. They’ll be country kids before you know it.

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