Build & Grow

This morning I took Scotty and Jane to Lowe's for the Build and Grow workshop for kids. I was a bit nervous that Jane would go crazy having to stay in the stroller the whole time, but she loved watching all the kids and playing with Scotty's goggles.

Today we built a kaleidescope, which was way harder than they made it out to be in the instructions. I should have known I was in for it when I opened the bag of nails and they all went flying, but since it snowed last night (come on already! can't we just have spring??), I knew Scotty wouldn't get to go to the park today and I wanted him to have some kind of activity outside the house, so we stayed.

Scotty stayed happy as long as he could hit his hammer, it didn't matter where, he just liked to bang it. So I was stuck trying to figure out how it went together, and every once in a while Scotty would lend a hand and hit the nail (or at least in the general direction of the nail) a few times.

My second mess up was when I put the picture wheel on wrong... that actually happened twice, but at least it was in two different ways. I didn't realize that I had put it on wrong the second time till the very end, I didn't fix it. While I was trying to decide between the narrow and wide boards, and which way the end pieces faced, Scotty got a little too excited with his hammer and started hitting the nails (that we were able to find) a little sooner than expected - good thing I have quick reflexes! My fingers got out of the way, but I dropped the kaleidescope and it fell apart. So we started over. We got it half way together and realized the ends are facing the wrong way. So we took it apart, again. I was almost done putting the glass - which is actually just a plastic mirror, thank goodness, since Scott hammered that about a dozen times - when the guy next to me says, "the glass has a plastic film on it, your supposed to take it off". Thanks. I don't think Scotty would have cared, but since I was being watched, I figured I should do it right. So we took it apart, again.

By the time I had it put together, we were the last people there - but that was probably a good thing, since Jane was whining and grunting as she tried in vain to get herself out of the stroller - Scotty was hammering any and all wood he could find and we had a very sad looking kaleidescope... BUT, we had so much fun. Scotty loved every second of it, and I loved helping him build something. And at the very least, now I know how to spell kaleidescope.