Assembling Baby's stuff is AWESOME...

This past weekend, Geoff and I took advantage of some sales and got Baby Howard's pack-n-play and swing. The swing, as with most of Baby Howard's things, was no problem to assemble, but the pack-n-play was a different story. Geoff and I consider ourselves relatively intelligent and not completely without handy bones in our bodies, but the pack-n-play was a challenge.

We began earnestly and excitedly, pulling things out of the box and arranging parts in a logical order. But things went downhill quickly. Graco provided a lovely little paper book of "directions." However, the directions were not directions at all. The directions were statements such as "Tubes should appear exactly as shown" placed next to a monochrome illustration that showed tubes sticking out of fabric and offering no guidance on how to insert the tubes. So, we inserted tubes the wrong way, put things on upside down, and took a break for Geoff to grab a beer. Then we realized we needed a screwdriver and some batteries, so we had to take a break to hunt for those (and for Geoff to get a beer--ha, just kidding!). We eventually gave up on using the "directions" and figured out the pack-n-play ourselves after a good 45 minutes of fiddling. Now Baby Howard has a place to rest and be changed in the basement (only our pack-n-play is green and brown). We ended up laughing and having a good time with this frustration, thinking ahead to the days of assembling Barbie dream houses or Star Wars "Geonosian solar sailers" late on Christmas Eves. We look forward to those challenges as well!

Love to all!