Thinking Inside the Box

Never underestimate the power of thinking inside the box. This weekend, Troy was about to dismantle, fold up and recycle a large white box that had encased our new memory foam mattress (yes we love it). I quickly stopped him. I had a hunch about our kids and the big white box. We had been in the middle of a rather trying Saturday morning with much dissension between the kids. It was overcast and grey outside and I'll just say that my spirits were in the dumps. Until the box. As I suspected, if you hand kids some crayons and markers and sit them in front of a canvas so white and blank and expansive as was that box they will be busy and happy for many hours. In our case, about four days. Yes, folks, my kids did not start fighting about the box until today. And you would not believe the time they put into the box. The outside is fun and colorful and scribbly, but it's the inside I love. Stomper spent HOURS in there, carefully drawing and painting scenes of dragons and terrible monsters. Bitty threw in a princess and mermaid or two, and it ended up like some sort of cave painting from a prehistoric and magical land. Awesome. So awesome, in fact, that Stomper begged me to let him sleep in the box on Saturday night. It seemed like a hassle to me, but Bitty said, "Oh mom, just let him." So we set up the box in their room with a blanket for padding and a pillow inside. Stomper craweld in and instantly decided that it was too scary. Much to my surprise, Bitty took a turn and seemed perfectly content. I really expected her to come wandering into the living room after 10 or 15 minutes telling us she couldn't sleep, but half an hour after lights out we peeked at her and she had totally zonked.


One funny thing I noted as I was looking at the box was something that reminded me of a bit from the ever infamous "Raising Arizona." Now, I do love this movie, but in general if ever anything in my life is reminiscent of it, it's not a good thing. Here's the box. Look closely to see if you can figure out to what I'm referring:


I don't know if you can see what it took me a few minutes to notice:

" Junior's learning his ABC's!"

Yes, Stomper is figuring out how to spell. Great. I know all bodily functions are hilarious to little kids, but really? So, should I be happy that Stomper finally seems to care about spelling and reading or should I go after him for scrawling one of the dreaded potty words on the box? Oh, this is making me laugh. I'm glad I took this picture! I'm going to save it for the slide show at his wedding.