Just a box!

WARNING THIS POST MAY BE BORING!!!

Just before son and 'DIL to be'left after Christmas, little grandson came to stay......for quite a lot of days!

They tend to take over our house and our lives. We were warned not to put glass ornaments on the lower branches of the tree......you already saw that I put all the things a baby might like there instead....to remove all spikey and poisonous plants from his reach!!! tho' he tends not to harm plants...being a thoughtful little botanist!

She said that his favourites at the moment are...cupboards and their contents...door and handles.

This set me thinking about all the fun we used to have in the old days when my kids were little....with just a cardboard box. We all know that most kids prefer the box to the toy within. We made a car with all sorts of knobs and dials, a fort with castellated turrets....painted it with thick grey paint mixed with sand, and boy was it gritty.

The house elf's Christmas present had arrived in a large very strong box, and that got me thinking.....if he likes cupboards full of plastic, door and handles then that is what he will get. He wouldn't have the strength to open our cupboard doors YET! anyway.

So when Christmas day was over....son, 'DIL to be' and I got our thinking caps on. I told them what I wanted and sonny boy drew it out on the box so that 'DIL to be' could cut it out....he being the architect and foreman!!

This is the back with little patio doors leading out into the carpet, and a fab circular window....just right for stuffies to peep out or to post things in....and to make it quite bright inside, tho' I am not sure that a baby will go into a cave!



One side has 4 windows, 2 single and 2 double....all with lime green little baby sized handles.

Son tapes up the inside...



...before we add the chimneys.




The house is in need of some exterior decoration but that's for later.

Grandbaby arrived and so did even more computers, this is just 4 out of the 5 Mac laptops to say nothing of the big screens. They do bring their work with them...no idle hands in my house!



Grandson is now 14 months old, has perfect balance and is quite capable of walking...but he tends to stick to walking round the furniture...always with an object in each hand....preferably his shoes....after all shoes are made for walking.

For speed he prefers crawling or his new mode...developed especially to hold an object in each hand...of standing up on his knees and shuffling forward.

I decided not to force his house on him but to let him discover it in his own good time.
The Christmas tree did fascinate him and every time he approached it his mum would say 'touch' and his index finger would reach out and touch an ornament ever so gently and make it bounce.

The house he ignored! just like his wrapped presents he had no concept of what it was.
I wondered if this was going to work.

Next day we decided to open the main door and tempt him..especially by his stuffies tapping on the little doors from inside and the poking their heads out of different door. Very soon he was pulling the little handles and giggling.

I showed him how I could post little objects down thro' the chimneys on the roof and with in a day he suddenly got it!



It's just baby height, cool!




By the 29th he had really got enthusiastic and discovered some of the many pieces inside...but his absolute favourite is to post a little plastic bottle down the chimney, drop to his knees, into the box to retrieve it and do it all over again.

I think this is one of his earliest sessions of entertaining himself.









Whenever he sees a chimney on a house from now on he will think it is there to post things thro'....bit like Santa really!

He is really good at ducking his head to get back out....until one time when he went right in and sat down and then couldn't get his head low enough to get out...design fault in the low doorway...blame the architect!!

You will now understand why Life and Thread Dyeing have been temporarily terminated!!

I don't know how you guys with little children manage!!

Happy New Year everyone.