Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Who Needs a DVD Player?

...when you've got a handyman husband?

As I thought about taking a road trip with Elijah, my biggest fear was his boredom. The last couple of times all three of us have made the trip home, Elijah has done really well--but that's with either Steve or me sitting in the backseat with him for about a third of the trip. Obviously by myself I wouldn't be able to keep him company back there--and he mostly just gets cranky in the car when he's bored, I think.

I knew I could pack lots of snacks and would have to plan to stop more often and for longer periods of time. But I also planned to keep a big crate in the front seat full of toys and books to hand to him. We figured that new toys might hold his attention longer, and Steve volunteered to make some. Yes, make.

Elijah really enjoys objects with moving parts--things that open and close, like a flip cell phone, a glasses case, or the clasp of a watch (can you tell his daddy is an engineer?). So Steve spent a morning downstairs in his workshop and came up with these:

The one on the left (he also made an identical one with five segments instead of three) pivots at each joint. The one on the right is sort of hard to explain from still pictures, but it folds open into something that looks like a ladder, or folds completely flat to look like this:



Scrap wood leftover from projects: free
Table saw, drill press, and other tools used: [let's not even try to add up how much those cost]
Keeping Elijah entertained in the car, and thus keeping Mama sane: priceless.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's awesome!

Kristin said...

I'm suddenly having toy envy. Didn't know that was possible. :) We have a huge car trip coming up in July/August and I'm already dreading the boredom factor! This is exactly the kind of thing William likes to play with...moveable parts to figure out and put together.