Hard at work

Since our little guests were more interested in playing with Liam and Mallory's toys during our party last weekend than they were in doing holiday-type activities, I still had a little craft kit tucked away in the cupboard after the party was over. It came in very handy this week when I was at home with an invalid Liam. Unable to walk or get down on the floor with his beloved cars, trucks and puzzles, the craft kit was a godsend.It's a little kit with all the components necessary to make 36 foam puppets-on-a-popsicle-stick: 9 each of a reindeer, snowman, gingerbread man and penguin. Liam started out by stating that he was going to make one of each. The pieces were all pre-cut, the googly eyes and pom poms came in the kit, and it was easy enough for him to tackle on his own. (Mallory tried too, with limited success, and she didn't really want my help.... eventually, she wandered back over to the Legos.)Liam can be a little too generous with the glue.Well, the boy is now on a personal quest to make all 36 puppets in the box. There is something about the gluing and the assembly of these puppets that he is just enamoured with. Before he went to bed on Wednesday night, he told me that he was going to assemble 3 more puppets while I cooked dinner on Thursday and a fourth after dinner. Unfortunately for him, all I did for dinner on Thursday night was heat up a can of soup, cut up some vegetables and plate some cheese and crackers - i.e. dinner did not take as long to cook as he'd hoped. No worries; he got right back to it after we had eaten. Right now there are about thirty sticky, messy popsicle stick characters and puddles of dried-up glue scattered all across the kitchen island, and I am not allowed to put them away or clean it up until the last few are finished and laid out there as well. Let's hope this all happens in a timely fashion, because I've been reduced to doing my kitchen prep work on a tiny section of the outside counter now, and my patience is starting to wear thin. There may not be anything more extravagant than a can of soup for days to come unless the situation is resolved soon.