Giant Cardboard Constructions

Sometimes you just have to give the babies every cardboard package that's come your way in the past six months, along with the promise of an infinite supply of hot glue:

When I proposed the project to Sydney, she immediately exclaimed that she wanted to build a play castle, big enough for her to sit in. I was imagining what I thought these smaller boxes were more suited to--namely, a model castle, that she could paint and play with her ponies in. I started to say, "Or, you could make a smaller castle," and then managed, through extreme force of will, to snap my meddling mouth shut and make myself available as the mute construction assistant that I was meant to be.

And, by using entire boxes as one wall each, by hinging that one big Playmobil box (it held the beloved unicorn playset from Grandma Beck, which doesn't even have a home because it's out being played with all the time) open so that one side could be a swinging door, by gluing a blue Jello (Willow's birthday ocean) box on top of another box to make the fourth wall tall enough to glue a shoebox (my new-ish running shoes) on top of the lot as a roof, and then by gluing a series of ever-smaller boxes together as a tower, and then gluing that tower on top of the roof for the castle's turret, I'll be damned if Sydney didn't make herself a play castle just exactly big enough for her to sit in.

And that's how I learn something new every single day.