Family Life

Daniel’s Aunty Raich sent him a wooden model plane for his birthday. There’s the picture from the box on the right. He was pretty excited about it. This ranked as a Pretty Cool Gift in his opinion, and he wanted to build it straight away. His younger brothers didn’t want to miss out on the fun either, so there were three small boys eager to get started.

I looked at the front of the box. I looked at the back of the box. I didn’t need to open it to know what was ahead: fiddly little pieces of wood, put together with glue. This wasn’t Lego. And that was just the mechanical challenge. I’d also be contending with three excited boys stumbling over each other, crowding me, wanting to be in on the action, to be involved, to do it all.

“Can I hold the glue Daddy?”
“Let me squeeze the tube!”
“I’ll hold that part Daniel.”
“No! It’s mine! Give it to me!”
“Mah [Micah] do it!”

Oh, I was looking forward to this, all right.

Daniel had received other gifts he really liked (Lego), so I managed to put him off for a couple of weeks. One Saturday, after daily pestering, I finally gave in and announced that we were going to build the model plane. Boy! You would have thought Christmas had come again, to hear the exuberant rejoicing! The boys were jumping up and down, laughing, cheering, yelling, crowding around me as I picked up the box. Just what I needed, as I prepared to start something that required quiet, careful concentration. I had to remind myself that whatever it looked like from my point of view, from the boys’ perspective this was going to be fun.

I put a cardboard tray on the dining table to contain all the pieces, and pulled three chairs together as close as I could. Daniel and Joel knelt on either side, leaning toward the tray, and I sat between them with Micah on my lap. When he’s engaged and interested in what’s happening, Micah is well-behaved and sits still and follows instructions. This arrangement was the best I could make of the situation, and actually turned out surprisingly well.

We took sheets of plywood out of the box and carefully punched out the pre-cut pieces. I arranged them loose on the tray in the same layout as the sheets, and told the boys we didn’t want to get the pieces jumbled up. Joel likes things to be in order so he immediately settled down. And Daniel? Well, I guess one bouncy child is easier to deal with than three.

The box had a postage-stamp sized piece of sandpaper which we used to smooth down the rough edges of the pieces we’d just liberated. Four heads clustered tightly around small pieces of wood.

Then the glue. By now I realized this was not going to be finished in one sitting, and started to prepare the boys’ expectations accordingly. This is what we can glue now, boys, and then we have to leave it to dry before we can glue more parts on. In fact, we’ll have to leave it overnight. This turned out to suit the boys’ limited attention span. Things were working out quite well. How surprising.

Day 1, Saturday. We glued the engine to the main spar (the spine), and glued the bulkheads (ribs) to the spar. Oh, and also the propeller hub but not the blades (much to the boys’ disappointment). And that was it for the first day.

Day 2, Sunday. We glued on the fuselage skin. This involved bending flat, straight pieces of wood to fit a round, tapered frame. Unfortunately, the wood did not like to bend. It much preferred to splinter and snap. This was not going to be easy. I sent Joel off to get some rubber bands–big, thick ones–which kicked the boys’ interest up a notch. They love rubber bands. After experimenting a bit with a couple of dry runs I realized I’d just have to jump in and wing it. Lots of glue, rubber bands wound around a dozen times, and Voil

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