Paper Toys

Poor KosherCop has a cold. A wet, sloppy, snuffly, hacking cold. The kind I haven't seen the likes of since he first started preschool and would come home sick every other week.

Since Monday is CSA day, KosherCop usually stays for "late-stay" at his school. That way KosherCook can manage the veggie pickup. So, since KosherCop was not in school, I worked from home today and looked after him. It was actually kind of nice - he's very snuggly when he's sick. And most of the day he was content to watch TV or do art projects.

He is really into cutting paper these days. He got a workbook a couple of years ago with pages of pictures to cut out - mostly for the practice of using the scissors - that was too hard for him. Just recently, though, he discovered this book and has cut his way through most of it. In fact, the few pages left are not challenging enough for him.

So as part of the keeping-the-whining-to-a-minimum extravaganza, I went looking for some more pictures for KosherCop to cut out. I remembered about the wonderful site, The Toymaker, a site I had subscribed to a while ago and filed away for future reference. Marilyn Scott Waters is an illustrator who designs paper toys you can download for free on her website. We downloaded the "Chocolate Truck" you see above and the "Fast Race Car".

KosherCop started cutting out the Chocolate Truck and got carried away and hacked off the wheels. Since he is really good at cleaning up his mess, he decided both the toys should be recycled and stuffed them in the recycling bin. Hours later I realized what happened, fished out the sheets, flattened them, reattached the wheels on the chocolate truck and tried to assemble it.

Ours did not turn out quite as nice as the picture above from the Toymaker's site, but it sure was cute. All the toys available are quite whimsical and delightful - I highly recommend visiting it. If I was printing them out for an older child, I probably would have printed them on cardstock so they were easier to put together. But with KosherCop I figured it would just mean nicer paper was going to end up in the recycling.

Another site that has a great selection of free downloads is the Canon site - they have a whole town you can print, cut, and assemble. The toys there are a little more complicated. I printed out parts of the town to put together myself when KosherCop was younger, and I think even now they are little too complicated for him. But they are pretty cool.

It's frustrating, though, because I can remember being sick as a child and my own mother would bring me these workbooks with a city or a circus or some other scene that had perforated pieces that I could punch out and assemble. In fact I remember spending a long, itchy week with the chicken-pox playing exclusively with these workbooks until a small city had sprouted up and overtaken our dining room. I cannot find anything like this anywhere now.

The other thing that provided far too much entertainment for my sick kid, was going to amazon.com and looking up every single Magic Treehouse book.

I have no one but myself to blame for this.

Yesterday we were supposed to go to the library after running errands, also to look at Magic Treehouse books. Not to borrow them - we already have a bunch out - just to look at them. As the day wore on, I realized he was getting sick and I felt pretty crappy myself. I wanted to get him home, so as he was crying (or trying to - his heart wasn't really in it) I dangled the promise of hot chocolate and "looking inside" the books online instead of going to the library.

Well, this was an instant hit and the fun continued today. KosherCop had me look up every book that had the "click to look inside" graphic so he could view each cover up close, find out the chapter names, and read the excerpt. He was very careful to avoid spoiling any upcoming plotlines, so for each book we had to stop reading when the kids reached the treehouse. For those of you who are familiar with these books, I'm sure you have noticed that as good as these books are, there is a formula. So essentially we read 25 times about 2 kids either waking up in the middle of the night or sitting on the porch in the rain, yelling "be right back" to one or both of their parents, and dashing off into the woods. Then KosherCop would hold up his hand and say "Stop! Go Back."

It never got old - for KosherCop. Me, you coulda stuck a fork in me after the first 3. The best part was that he kept telling me - while I was trying to work - that he "needed the computer".

Ah yes, my first taste of things to come. I didn't expect to hear that for a couple of years yet.

Monday Moments

Mondays are always rife with insanity, especially after a long weekend. Here are a few noteworthy moments out of my Monday.

Annual Review:
I had my annual review at work today. I've been at the same company now for 4 years and the review process is as inscrutable as ever. My supervisor has pretty much abandoned preparing anything beforehand, and instead we decide together what my review should say.

There is a part of the document where he is supposed to rate my performance in various areas on a scale of 1 to 6 (Why 6? It may as well go to 11!), but instead he had me rate myself while we were sitting there. After the third time I rated myself a 6, I asked if maybe he saw a pattern emerging.

I told him the story of how in the 3rd grade we had an assignment to invent a machine and create a poster about how it worked. I came up with a really imaginative machine and made a great poster, complete with molded aluminum foil letters for the title. When we turned in our posters our teacher asked us to evaluate them and write down what we could have done better. Being a perfectionist, I noted the slightly skewed handwriting that I would have preferred be straighter if only I'd had more time.

She made me do it again. The second poster sucked, but the letters were straight. My mother (Z''L), furious, issued the edict that as I traveled the road of life, anytime I was in a similar situation, I was to say that my work was exemplary and nothing needed improvement.

My boss got a good laugh out of this story. Then he gave me a four.

Death by Pastry:
On my commute home today there was almost no traffic for the first half of the trip. I was going at a pretty good clip, kind of daydreaming and driving on auto-pilot. I've considered actually driving this route blindfolded - I think I could do it, but I hear it's frowned upon. Suddenly, I was dragged screeching into consciousness by the rapidly approaching rear end of a tractor-trailer that was braking in front of me.

I slammed on my brakes. But even as I held my breath and prayed that I hadn't waited too long for a tuneup, a part of me was strangely exhilarated.

The back end of the truck was emblazoned with the Entenmann's logo. I was about to crash into a truck full of pastry and a small part of my brain was not participating in the survival exercise at hand. Instead it was fantasizing about hitting the gas and becoming airborne. I would fly into the air a la Thelma and Louise, crash through those dessert covered doors and magically alight amid an avalanche of chocolate-covered donuts and soft baked cookies.

Needless to say the smarter, less interesting part of my brain prevailed.

And finally...

World's Worst Driving Dad Award
Again, on my commute home - a couple of blocks from home I decided to stop for a yellow light instead of gunning through it. As I slowed to a stop, I noticed the driver behind me, who had apparently been tailgating me, looking for all the world as if he was about to rear end an Entenmann's truck. Only he looked pissed. Scary pissed, like he might get out of his car and start banging on my window pissed.

I kept my eye on him while were at the light and I suddenly realized there was a very small, very young head just visible over the dashboard in the passenger seat. I also realized he was staring at me in my rearview mirror - he could see me watching him. So he started inching forward and repeatedly stopping the car short while gritting his teeth at me .

That's right - angry scary dad was playing road rage games with a very small child sitting in the front seat - with not even a seat belt apparent on the child.

Bravo, Road Rage Dad! You win the prize for Scariest Schmuck on a Monday!