Constructing Christmas. OR: Where the %%$^& is the little brown fencepost?

"Maybe we should just put it together now, and have them out under the tree for her when she wakes up tomorrow morning."  I suggested to my wife after we put my daughter to bed on Christmas eve, as I looked at the box that contained the Playmobil Wildlife Play Station

Fiona had received the Playmobil Animal Nursery  the weekend before as an early christmas present from a family member,  and the insanity of IT'S assembly was still fresh in my head.

"No, she won't have as many to open then."  My wife answered.
"She loves opening them."

And she does.  And more specifically to the story, she did.   She loved opening everything Christmas morning.
What little kid doesn't?

The problem is, we ended up spending 10 minutes opening presents, and AT LEAST two hours putting them together.

The box states that the set comes with a bazillion pieces, and that sounds pretty impressive.   And it truly IS impressive, but not QUITE as cool as it sounds.

Because when  you open it, you  find out that the worlds smallest flashlight is two pieces; the worlds smallest jar is two pieces; every VEGETABLE is two pieces; a tree is at least five pieces, the little straps for the binoculars and camera are each their own piece, and the structure itself... yikes.
And yikes again.

It came with a sheet of stickers, so you could label the small pieces if you wanted, to make them look more "real".
Wonder if each sticker counted as a piece?


And while the end result is sturdy and looks great, was it really necessary to make the product so that every little piece of the structure is... a separate piece?

the instructions might as well have read:

"Here's a wall, the wall has space for a window and a door.   We could have made it so that the window and the door are framed already,  but... no.  Those are separate pieces.
So here's the wall with holes, now insert the frames into the holes, now insert the window into the window frame into the window hole, and NOW the door into the door frame into the door hole...."

And the packaging of the bazillion separate pieces left a bit to be desired, too.

"Honey, do you know which of the eight bags of randomly thrown together pieces holds that small dark brown fence post?  I can't finish the railing without it! No, not the bigger, lighter brown one, I already found IT - it was in the bag with the zebra, the rifle, one of the tree pieces, two of the carrot tops and the cage padlock...."

All while your child's standing there, with two cheetah cubs in her hand, asking you if she can play with it yet.

"Not yet, darlin'.   I have to snap the cot into the side wall into the front wall into the floor...."

Can I put the monkey in the cage?  The monkey really needs to go in the cage!

"Well as soon as I put the four pieces of cage together, and then attach it to the underside of the floor of the stilt house, and then connect the house to the top of the floor ...."

And the pieces don't just snap together.  Nope.  That would be crazy.

Instead, they provide you with bags of little, tiny connectors of various colors, and a little tool designed only to insert the connectors into their respective holes on each piece so that you can in turn connect that piece to another piece....  And of COURSE each color connector's specific to various pieces, because having all connections being the same size is, well.. just plain silly, I guess.

And yikes again.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter, as she loves the toys, and has played with them a lot over the last  couple of days.  

How life changes

Even though I’ve been at it now for awhile, I still find myself marveling at how my life’s changed in the last few years, due mostly to the arrival and continued presence of my daughter.

Today, it was a trip to Target on my lunch hour.
A few last minute Christmas baking items, mostly. But there were a couple of other things. After all the baking goods were in the cart,  I found myself looking at wrapping paper, because presents from Santa cannot be wrapped with same paper as presents from mom and dad.
Duh!
 And I’m looking at all of this wrapping paper, trying to think about what kind of paper the elves would use to wrap presents.
 Probably not the CARS2 paper, doubtful they’d use Toy Story or Tinkerbell themed paper… Would they use paper that said “Ho Ho Ho” on it?
Blue wrapping paper? Would they even CONSIDER using blue paper?

WHAT IF I PICK THE WRONG PAPER AND END UP RUINING SANTA CLAUS FOR MY DAUGHTER????
 This is a serious dilemma, my friends. And I laughed aloud at myself for spending so much time on it, startling the two older ladies who were standing nearby, conversing in polish, probably about what kind of wrapping paper they use at the North Pole.

 I went with a pattern that’s reminiscent of a candy cane, by the way. Red and white strips, mostly, with a little thread of green mixed in.

On the heels of the wrapping paper conundrum, I found myself looking at shoes for little girls. Right up until the mother of the little girl started screaming for security, and reaching for the can of leftover pepper spray she had in her purse, forgotten there since she finished up her shopping at 5:30am on Black Friday….

 Sorry, I drifted off there… Where was I?
 Oh! Shoes for little girls!

 See, Fiona has a light blue and white dress that we’re hoping makes it through Christmas. It's made it through a couple of holiday functions already, and..we're hopeful.
However, there was an incident yesterday, which forced us to dispose of her silver, sparkly shoes that went with that dress.
"But you can’t have a Christmas dress without the appropriate shoes!" some of you are saying.
I know, or more accurately, I've been told.

So I was standing in the little girl shoe aisle, looking for a pair of sparkly silver shoes in size 10, to ensure proper accessorizing on the part of my four year old daughter.
And I found just the pair, and spent several more minutes going through all the rows of boxes, trying unsuccessfully to find them in size 10.

Without exaggeration, I spent less time shopping for the last fishing pole I purchased.

 Yesterday, it was an off-handed comment I overheard a mom say, as my daughter told Santa what was on her Christmas list.
 Earlier in the morning, my wife relayed a story to me, about friends of ours shopping for or with their four year daughter. If I have the story right, she wanted, or had picked out, a car related toy of some kind.
 She was pretty excited about it.
 And the woman at the check out voiced surprise at it, surely she didn’t want the car related toy.
 (Inferred – that’s for boys.)
 And we were indignant on their behalf.

Fast forward a bit, we were at Brunch with Santa, at the Brookfield Zoo, a “My, how life changes" moment in and of itself.
Fiona’s telling Santa that she wants a drum for Christmas.
The woman standing next to me, likely not knowing I was Fiona’s dad, exclaims: “A drum? The little girl wants a drum?!?!?” And I was ready to throw down, right in front of Santa. I was gonna give this complete stranger a lecture about NOT being ignorant and forcing outdated gender expectations on your…. Blah blah blah blah. I didn’t, of course. Santa was watching.
 And a few moments later, my daughter got sick and hastened our exit.

 But oh, how life changes...