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Sunday, October 08, 2006

The Wine Cork Catamaran

We had a wonderful evening last night. The kids played while the grownups made dinner, interracted, sipped wine, and finally sat about laughing and telling tales.

I had bought "Adam" (Giselle's 3 year old) some wonderful books and toy cars for his birthday. I had also bought "Trace" (her 11 year old) an excellent book about crafts.

I'll admit outright that Trace is my favorite. Young kids bore me anyway, and Trace and I bonded a long time ago. Sure Adam's cute, but Trace steals my breath away. This kid is incredibly like SaurKid in both brains and personality, and he's quite the charmer. So when Trace asks me to do something, I'll immediately leave the adults to help.

Trace was studiously working on assembling a wine cork contraption; using a concept he'd seen in the new book. Being a former catamaran sailor, I told him it looked just like a catamaran, and so that's what we dubbed it.

With every new change to his design, Trace would proudly bring the revised version to show me. The final catamaran was assembled from 4 wine corks, with toothpicks holding them together. Another toothpick held a flag that was perched jauntily on top of one of the corks.

He needed a tarp (so that things could be placed on the catamaran) so we got out a plastic grocery bag and cut one out, with extra flaps so that it formed a fat cross. We pulled the flaps over the toothpicks, stapled each one down, and he had a beautiful makeshift catamaran which he played with for hours.

And who said all kids toys are expensive nowadays?

8 comments:

Miss Cellania said...

Smart kid! It means so much more that he designed and built it himself. He should be proud!

Deb said...

Kids toys are expensive, if they're wine corks (depending on the type of wine you drink!) ;)

Hopefully Trace wasn't using those new corks that some wines are now using that literally leaks and cracks---because they're plastic now! I'm so upset over this! My favorite white wine has trouble in the cooler because the cork leaks. What happened to the old fashioned kind? *sigh* Sorry, an alcoholic's problem I guess!

Trace seems like an incredible kid!

The Lazy Iguana said...

How many wine corks would I need to construct a 22 foot power cat with twin 150 HP outboards and a t-top with radar arch?

Jenn said...

haha! Just like the child who plays with the box of the $35 toy you just purchased. :o)

That sounds like a fun afternoon.

Anonymous said...

Imagination is the best toy any child can have. And as an adult going along for the ride is so much fun!

Nihilistic said...

I remember cutting up garbage bags as a kid to make parachutes for my Star Wars figures. Then throwing them out the second story window to see if it would work. I think I ran up and down those stairs 50 times just to get it just right!

Kristie said...

yeah, usually my son's favorite part of the new expensive toy someone buys him is the box it comes in. He will play with the box until it completely falls apart (which sometimes can take days) and only then will he finally check out the toy. Unless another box has shown up at the house.

Herb said...

Modern kids' toys do not allow for imagination.