Handiwork

Inspirational song: Fly Me to the Moon (Frank Sinatra)

It's getting easier to cater to a certain little girl now that she is developing distinct preferences and favorites. She really likes transportation and heavy machinery, so grandpa sends videos of airplanes and photos of construction equipment ("snorts") for her parents to show her. We know she loves trains, so we took her on that train ride last weekend. And now she is obsessed with outer space, especially the idea of her going there someday. She builds rocket ships out of blocks and talks about flying to the moon every day. Whether this will translate into studying aeronautics or astronomy, or even getting to be an astronaut is yet to play out. For now, I'm enjoying surprising her with space-themed small gifts, like the puzzle I snagged today when I had to run an errand at Walmart.

She started wanting to help me solve puzzles on my iPad, something I do as a bit of a meditative exercise. I let her do it until she gets bored and hops off my lap to do other things, but it gets me a little tense watching her do it, the opposite of what I intended. Her mommy bought some simple, large-piece puzzles for her at the dollar store, and she took to them like she was born for it. Today we were all at Walmart, and she was looking at some display in the toy department. While she was distracted, we poked through the puzzles and found one based on Encanto (that came in a metal lunchbox!), and I picked one that was of outer space. I didn't notice until we opened it today that it was 100 pieces, but did that stop her? Nope. Smartypants little 3 year-old took her time, and with only a few vague hints from grandma, solved the whole thing in one sitting. I bet we play with them again tomorrow.

We have to solve them at the dining room table, which has gotten messy again, to keep Professor Grabbyhands from taking off with pieces. I'm in the middle of sorting and tossing and decorating for fall, so the table should be ready for her soon. Boy is not ready for puzzles yet to speak of, not even the chunky wooden ones, so he gets to do other pursuits. He's getting pretty good with those plastic blocks, so we will let him go at his own speed.

Does my average audience know the meme that uses the fist of the cartoon character Arthur? I looked down into the cart where Dmitri was napping, and it was all I could see. A quick Google search (Arthur meme) would show you what I mean.