Build Your Wagon, and Come Along!

Our Christmas this year was one of firsts: our first Christmas living in California; Sumie's first Christmas as a full-fledged doctor; my first Christmas as a stay-at-home dad; and Mimi's first Christmas when toys meant more than wrapping paper.  It was also the first year that we had to spend considerable time not only opening gifts, but building them.  Me, I actually love this.  Normally. 

Building anything with Mimi's help requires, how shall I put this, a bit more patience than I was born with.  Or will ever have.  Or God every expected of anyone.  She's a task-master with the unfortunate habit of flinging tiny nuts, screws, bolts, and washers great distances while screaming.  This is the Mimi school of management.  I will say that it's an effective motivator.  Whatever project you're working on, if she's helping, you'll try to finish as quickly as humanly possible. 

This year Grandma and Grandpa gave Mimi and wonderful red wagon.  In a box.  Unassembled. 

"No problem," I thought, and went to fetch my tools.  Mimi was intrigued by the wagon's many functions.  Seats up, seats down, one seat up and the other down.  The combinations were endless!

Normally, putting together a wagon like this would take me at most 10 minutes.  But wagon building, as I found out, is far more difficult when someone insists that the wagon be occupied throughout the construction process.  It takes even longer when this  person also screams, throws your tools, and drools on you.  And there's nothing you can do about it because the person is too cute.  And don't be fooled by my T-shirt.  No amount of Ivy League education will prepare you for the wrath of a toddler waiting for her new toy. 

After a while, Mimi stopped "helping" and just sat there wondering when her incompetent oaf of a father would finish. 

And do you think she thanked me once the last nut was tightened?  No.  She just wanted to know where I'd pull her!

Mimi loves her wagon.  As I was washing the car last night she pulled it around the empty garage, pretending she was heading west.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that we were already about as west as one can go.  Soon she'll be pulling her stuffed animals down the block with it.  Hmm, maybe I can send her on a grocery run sometime soon.  I wonder if Safeway will sell beer to a toddler on the basis that she can't open the bottles.