Do-it-yourself project

Yesterday I had a 45-minute wait at the dentist's office, and I ended up reading Parents Magazine. I generally try to avoid Parents Magazine, because the articles generally focus on 1) what a terrible parent you are and 2) all of the different ways your child will die.

Sounds awful, but it's true. I used to subscribe, and each issue had at least one child-death or near-death story in it. This month the killer was H1N1.

Anyway. I ended up reading an article about how you need to let kids do things for themselves, which, assumed the article, I'm probably not doing, because I'm a terrible parent. Otherwise I would not need the sage advice of Parents Magazine.

Later that day, WCK wanted to open the wood blinds on our living room windows. Now, I could have done this for her in about two seconds with a flick of my wrist, but I could still feel Parents Magazine judging me, so I decided to let her do it herself.

She could not reach the twisty thing (I'm not sure what you call it, so I'm calling it "twisty thing"), so she got a stool and climbed up on it. She still couldn't reach it, so she decided she needed some type of instrument that could twist the twisty thing for her. Her first choice was a pair of scissors. Don't tell Parents Magazine, but I felt I needed to step in at this point and tell her not to use a pair of scissors on the wood blinds. She thought about it some more, and decided the perfect instrument for twisty-thing grabbing would be her Abraham Lincoln on a stick, which we purchased from the Lincoln Museum in Illinois some time back. Here's a photo, in case you've forgotten:



She went upstairs, and there followed a good 15 to 20 minutes of screaming and crying and carrying on that she COULD NOT FIND MR. LINCOLN ANYWHERE!!!!! Don't tell Parents Magazine, but I finally went upstairs and located Mr. Lincoln under a pile of dress-up clothes. By then, WCK had to take a potty break, and then she came back downstairs and started playing with something else for another 15 to 20 minutes until she remembered she had been trying to open those blinds.

There followed a brief moment of panic when she realized that, once again, she COULD NOT FIND MR. LINCOLN!!!

I reminded her that he was still upstairs. Back upstairs to fetch Mr. Lincoln. Back downstairs to try to use him to grab the twisty thing. Several moments of trying to use Abraham Lincoln to open the blinds to no avail.

Don't tell Parents Magazine, but I stepped in and tried to shove the twisty thing into Mr. Lincoln's mouth while WCK held the stick. Didn't work.

Finally, I opened the blinds for her in about two seconds with a flick of my wrist.

How I've failed. I'm sure she'll grow up to have a confidence problem, or, at the very least, a lack of trust in Abraham Lincoln.