cardboard creativity

For Valentines this year my sweetheart built me an Ikea dresser. I purchased the dresser on January 4th, but it took us a solid five weeks to muster up the will to open the boxes and follow the picture instructions. We've built enough dressers to know exactly what we were in for. It probably won't go down as the most romantic valentines days of my life, but it was awesome. We were in fun moods and we now have four hemnes dressers of all shapes and sizes organizing our clothes.

The very best part of the dresser delighted me all week long. It was the cardboard box it came in. It has given us five solid days of entertainment and is still going strong. Ivar made a pizza to fit in the pizza box that held all the small parts for the dresser. Below he made a robot and the bottom picture he proudly told me "is a statue!" The mileage from that big box is incredible and it is a joy to watch my kids create. I didn't do much guiding on this one...my kids found the tape and scissors and asked for the crayons. On the whole, they are just getting more self-sufficient.

I also am learning the art of letting Ivar take the lead. The first day he had me cutting up tiny squares to make "bricks for the roof!" I cut the bricks and helped decorate them and knew there was no way these things would end up making a roof. After all, I have 28 years of fort-building expertise on the kid. But I followed his plans, did what he said and in the end, after trying lots of failed options he happily decided that the bricks on the roof could be "decorations on the wall!" I was proud of him for course-correcting. And even more proud of myself for not taking over the role of project manager. :)