Some Assembly Required

Those are words that I never want to read on a product that I plan to purchase. Conversely, I’m discovering that Nathan not only doesn’t mind “some” assembly, but he actually enjoys it! I don’t know from which planet he hails, but all of this baby prep puhas given him plenty of assembly projects and he’s loving it. Craving it perhaps.

The second we got the crib, for example, he was immediately in the bedroom putting it together….even though we wouldn’t be using it for months. The same is true for all of the other baby items we’ve acquired. Yesterday we had a baby shower, and today, he couldn’t wait to dig into the boxes and start playing with stuff. But here’s where it gets good. I actually assembled the swing by myself while he was playing with a stroller. That’s right people. I read the instructions one by one and got that sucker put together all on my own. And it even had screws. How’s that for handy? Uh huh, I think so too.

Maybe some of you are wondering what the big deal is. It’s a swing after all, not a car. So here is where I tell you about the time that my college roomie and best friend Bethany and I put together an entertainment center. It was our first time living away from home and I guess we decided it might be nice to have something to put our TV in rather than leave it sitting on the floor. So off to Best Buy we went.

We picked one out and of course the dreaded words “some assembly required” were plastered on the box. That was probably our first mistake. But we were on a budget, so there would be no solid wood, pre-assembled pieces for us. And while we knew it would be a challenge, we decided we were up for it.

That thing took HOURS for the two of us to put together! I’m talking an entire Sunday spent staring at those instructions and trying to decipher what in the hell it wanted us to do. At one point, we even nailed a piece of cardboard onto the wrong spot and there was no getting that nail out, so it had to stay. I think when we moved out, we both agreed to just take the thing to the dumpster, 1) because it couldn’t be taken apart to be moved and 2) there was no use trying to sell something of such poor craftsmanship. But you know, even though we knew we had messed up and we should have been able to do it much faster and much better, we were still proud of ourselves for getting it done.

And that my friends is the same pride I felt today in assembling that swing by myself! Even if it wasn’t that complicated and the average fifth grader could do the same thing. Baby steps.

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