Kitchen Aid

It is no secret that children's toys are unnecessarily complicated to put together. Furthermore, there seems to be an inverse correlation between the straightforwardness of the object and the ease of it's assembly. The microscope? That comes in one piece, give or take a couple of glassslides. The big wheel? Yeah, that bad boy needs a graduate degree in engineering and some night classes with the local auto-mechanic to put together.

So it should have come as no surprise to me that when I opened the play kitchen SB had received for her birthday, instead of seeing 3 large plastic sections (that I was fully prepared to snap together) I was confronted with about 500 miniature plastic pieces (in four snazzy color selections) along with a mysterious bag of screws (in 2 different sizes) and some black and white directions with images so blurry that it was hard to tell which side of what piece was "up." All I could gather was that I'd need a screwdriver and, inexplicably, some wire snips.

Now I consider myself a rather handy, and somewhat clever, girl. No one's suggesting I can build high-rises and suspension bridges, but I've put my share of Ikea furniture together (with a minimum of extra bits left over). But this? This kitchen was a whole new ball game.

To begin with, the various plastic pieces were identified by letters, starting with "A" and ending with "ZZ" - which should give you an idea of how many there were. Add to that the fact that you couldn't actually read these identifiers on most of the pieces and I was left to either cross reference the component to a 6-digit number that identified the actual mold that these bits came attached to or, far less usefully, attempt to match the mystery part to the microscopic picture on the aforementioned guide.

A woman of less grit and gumption than I would have given up right then and there. But I am not that woman. Or is it that I am that woman? This is all very confusing. At any rate, spurned on by a sense of obligation to my child, and (primarily) a stupid prideful stubbornness that wouldn't let me be defeated by a box full of plastic, I spent the next 3 hours poring over incomprehensible instructions, cutting and shaving plastic bits, screwing numerous screws into mysterious holes (and btw, screwing into plastic is not as simple as one would be led to believe), and finally, sticking on stickers. All in time for the nap to end.

Finally, victory was mine. And the kitchen stood assemble in all of its plastic (although slightly crooked) grandeur for Otter to admire. Am I unreasonably proud of myself for having conquered the plastic behemoth? Hell yeah. Now, when Otter makes her next batch of pretend eggs, she'll know those splatter marks all over her toy are mommy's blood sweat and tears.