I mean, EVERY toy?
You pick out a toy at the store. It comes in a nice shiny colorful box with sweet pictures and words like "cool", "new!", and "awesome!" are slapped all over it.
It also comes with the words "some assembly required"
"some" is a lie. It should say "extensive expertise in carpentry, mechanics, rocket science and medicine is required."
I say "medicine" because usually I end up bleeding after attempting to get microscopic screws into a hole that is CONVENIENTLY behind 3 layers of plastic that no NORMAL human should be able to physically reach.
I also say "carpentry" because usually something in our house breaks after I throw the screwdriver across the house and it impales itself into one of our cupboards.
...that part is only a fantasy of mine.
Naturally the day after a kid's birthday is entitled "Assemble Everything In Creation Day". This morning I groaned when I got into the living room and saw a terrible pile of boxes full of toys that needed assembling.
Assembling is Daddy's job. I don't have the patience to assemble. In fact Daddy assembled most of the toys yesterday. But he didn't get around to a couple of them.
But of course Calen NEEDED to be able to play with ALL of those new toys (at once), so I spent TWO HOURS assembling toys.
TWO toys.
TWO HOURS....for TWO toys.
First of all, one was really big and I figured it would give me a run for my money. It's a super awesome construction site that Brad's folks got for him. However, the box was huge, so I assumed that maybe part of it was already put together. Like the mountain part with the crane on top.
Instead, the box was full of tons of AIR, and the mountain part was in like five pieces. That I had to screw together. With the smallest screws YOU'VE EVER SEEN (like, the kind that if you drop them on the floor, you might as well just go buy more because you will NEVER find it again). And the hole where all the screws went (12 of them) were in slots maybe eight inches deep that were probably no wider than a pencil eraser.
So, how exactly am I supposed to screw these in?
It required small hands. I have small hands. But by small I mean like...my 11 month old's hands. And he couldn't help me (he would probably just munch on a handful of screws like they were Cheerios anyways).
Therefore, it took me an HOUR AND A HALF to screw in this god-forsaken mountain.
That entire hour and a half Calen is impatiently pestering me to BUILD THE CONSTRUCTION SITE PLEEEEEASE!!!!! HURRY MOMMY NOWWWWW!!"
I finally got the mountain done. The tracks and road didn't take long to snap together. And as soon as I finished, Cam crawled over, picked up the track, broke everything apart (except for the mountain, which will NEVER come apart for the next 27 years after all the screws I put into it).
The construction site is now safely in Calen's ROOM where little brother can't get to it.
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| after an hour and a half, this awesome construction site was finally put together. Three minutes after this picture, Cam came and ruined it. And it was quickly moved to Calen's room. |
Calen also likes his new found freedom of being able to go back and forth between his room and the living room without us following him.
Except for that one time when he fell down the stairs.
I think kids should just come with four legs until the age of 8 just to keep their center of balance lower.
THEN, not even twenty minutes after the mountain catastrophe, Calen wanted to play "Bugs", which was the game of "Cooties" (who doesn't love that game? I remember playing with it ALLLL the time) that my cousin got for him.
Cam was asleep so I figured it was safe to play. I opened the box and dumped out the pieces.
Some assembly required??? For COOTIES? REALLY?
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| Some assembly required. For COOTIES!! Come on! |
All of the little legs, eyes, mouths, antennae etc were attached to those stupid plastic holder thingys. Because some factory bastard was so lazy they couldn't even take them apart and throw them in the box. So I had to spend the next half hour pulling little plastic legs apart.
Kind of gruesome in a way. Almost reminded me of pulling legs off of crane flies when I was little.
Don't look so disgusted. You know you did it too.
The eyes even had an extra step: you had to peel eye stickers off and place them on the eye pieces. Would it really have put out the manufacturers that much by sticking the eye stickers onto the eyes before you shipped? Look, it even creates jobs! I'm helping the economy.
And let's not forget one toy assembly catastrophe yesterday: another toy SCREWED into the BOX.
We've dealt with toys screwed directly into the box before. It's still just as stupid. I know people steal, but do you really think someone is going to be capable of walking out of a store with a double-toaster sized Caterpillar Excavator tractor that makes tons of noise?
Okay I know people can steal big things. Didn't some lady shove a Thanksgiving turkey down her pants or something? But Thanksgiving turkeys don't play music and make construction noises.
And if someone wanted to steal something THAT big, they'd probably just steal it WITH the box.
And the worst part about all these toys attached to the boxes with screws, or plastic tab things, or twine, or whatever is that is causes you to have to pick up that much more shit when you're picking up all the box debris to throw away. And those little security things are small and always end up under various furniture pieces or into certain babies' mouths.
So I crawled around on the floor today finding all the little plastic security pieces, extra screws, etc. I thought I found everything. Then I went to vacuum tonight after the kids went to bed.
"WREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-CRUNCH!!! CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLAAAAANG"
And just what the in HELL was that??
A screw. That I had missed. From the mountain-assembly-of-doom.
Poop.
Luckily it seems that my poor vacuum has survived this near death experience. Otherwise Little Tikes would have owed me a new vacuum for their stupidness.
Only a month until the NEXT kid's birthday in this house...where we get to do it all over again.
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