Christmas pride

Casey Ressler-Resslin' Around

Around 10 p.m. on Christmas, with our eyes almost shut because of a day's worth of commotion, my wife gave me a compliment.

"I'm so proud of you," she said. I followed with a "thanks," thinking she was referencing life in general. I didn't realize the reason she was so proud was because of the bright object on the floor.

"You didn't even mess up once," she said. And then I realized that she was talking about the Fisher-Price Crawl and Cruise Playground that took me an hour to put together, despite the box's claim that minimal assembly was required.

Christmas takes on a whole new feeling when you have a child who needs all the gifts put together. Last year, our daughter Madison was a few weeks old and didn't comprehend Christmas. This year, she is walking around and enjoys toys that drive her parents insane, and they require lots of assembly.

I'm constructionally challenged, meaning that even though you only need a screwdriver to put together the toy, it can be a full day's worth of work. And that doesn't jive with Christmas.

"The ball chute doesn't fit in the deflector, and the light-up thing isn't working," I shouted to my wife about five minutes into the project. "This is too complicated. She'll end up just playing with the empty box anyway. Let's save this stupid thing for her birthday."

My wife wouldn't have it, and after about an hour, everything was finally put together. Incredibly, everything fit together just like it was supposed to. Never mind Madison had been asleep for 45 minutes, having given up on her father's ability to put her toys together.

Getting it together became a personal mission, and at long last, I had succeeded. Nothing could get in the way of me getting that thing put together. Well, almost nothing.

"Did you pick up batteries yesterday like I asked you?" my wife said. "This thing takes three C batteries and all we have is four double-As."

I'll consider it a tie with the Fisher-Price people.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor.