Eli: Jigsaws

Eli's been taking a real interest in jigsaw puzzles. In the picture (July), he did a 12-piece puzzle with a little help. By now, he's moved on to the 24-piece Thomas puzzle (mainly because he lost one of the 12 pieces so he couldn't do that one anymore) and can do it with no help at all. He can do a 36-piece Eric Carle Chameleon puzzle with a little guidance to keep his 2-year old ADD from creeping in. Even though I purposely bought that chameleon puzzle because the colors were simple and almost force you to look at the pieces instead of just do trial and error, I think it's still pretty impressive for a 2-year old, if I may say so myself. :-)

Now before you assume that we are these pushy Asian parents who are forcing our kids to do jigsaw puzzles, you're absolutely right. :-) I'm almost ashamed to say that we did have an impromptu puzzle night one night where we sat with the boys and did jigsaw puzzles with them. I think Eli and I worked on the chameleon puzzle and Tobey was working on the 50 states puzzle (a puzzle with no state outlines to show where the pieces go). When Tobey finished with his puzzle, Tom and I in a friendly duel raced each other to do the state puzzle and believe it or not we tied at 2:14. Then we put Tobey on a timer and that's when we knew we had reached true Chinese parent status: we were timing our 4-year old on a jigsaw puzzle. Next thing you know we'll be sending him to competitions and I'll be saying "Waaavuhleee" in a low Chinese accent. FYI, it took him 11:15.

Needless to say, we like jigsaw puzzles around here. Tom and I even tossed around the idea of getting a 1,000 piece puzzle to do ourselves, a couply activity to do together. But we concluded that right now, we don't have the time.