Puzzled

Last year during school, puzzles helped so much.  They would keep David so engaged and quiet.

With the summer busy-ness, somehow puzzles always didn’t get put away.  Then I started finding pieces all over the house: under couches, in pockets, in the Legos…etc.  It was driving me nuts.  I moved the multiple puzzle boxes from where they were on the bookshelf, and into the old drawer for homeschool supplies.  It’s a broken dresser from the dumpster, and until it is replaced, I thought it could serve as a good hiding spot to keep the scattered puzzles together.

As I found more pieces, I threw them in the drawer.  “We’ll find which puzzle they go to later.” I told myself.

Well, the day came.  The kids needed a job, and I needed to make sure these puzzles were ready and available for when school started.  It did not go well.

So the next day, I figured I’d have to do all umpteen puzzles myself to organize them and see what was still missing.  However, if I was going to spend the precious time while the babies were napping, than Silje and David were going to have to at least be there to help me.

We cleared the dining room table to assemble all of them.  The puzzle pieces were in a huge pile and I started sorting them as best as I could.  I had to make a few judgment calls.  Did this yellow machinery piece go to the Transformers puzzle, or the bulldozer puzzle?  Were these deer eyes, rabbit eyes, kitty eyes or porcupine eyes?  Then there was the grass.  4 puzzles had lots of grass in them, so there was just a pile of green pieces that could have ended up with any of them.

I thought about just throwing it all away.  I really did.  It was my best help in managing the preschooler during homeschool last year and I was going to throw them out without a fight.

We did the easy puzzles first.  When someone had used all the pieces available for that puzzle, they would move on.  Sometimes when we were working on the next one, we would find a piece that belonged to a “finished” one on the table that still had missing pieces.  It was a good system.  We each had our own puzzle to work on.

Puzzles are really David’s thing, and it was so much fun to see him in action.  Many of them he’s done easily 100 times, but some he had never done, like the 100 piece puzzles.  When we were down to the last 3 puzzles…the hardest, Silje had the one with the bunnies, I had the one with the kitties, and David had the one with the porcupine.  The kitties I was working on were sitting in a mess of yarn, and my head was beginning to spin.

David asked if he could work on mine for awhile since he had done that one before.  I was stuck, not knowing if I was missing the pieces I needed or if I just wasn’t seeing it.  He finished it in about 60 seconds after I left the puzzle.  Then we worked on the porcupine one together.

It’s amazing to see your child’s brain at work.  There is no other word for it than amazing.  He put together 5 pieces for every 2 that I put together.  He would just see a piece, and set it down exactly where it should go.  He had not done this puzzle before, but we (mostly him) finished it in a matter of minutes.  He was moving at least 3 times faster than me.  Then we went to help Silje with her bunnies.  3 ended up being a crowd, so I let Silje and David (mostly him) finish it up.

I just stood back and thought “how is he doing this so fast?  He just sees it all organized in his head!”  He would rarely look at the picture on the piece, but would look hard at the shape of  the edge.  Then he would match it exactly to a shape in the puzzle.  It was so much fun to watch those wheels turning.

When we were done, and all the puzzles were boxed in their own boxes, David gave a huge sigh of contentment.

“I’ve missed doing puzzles, Mommy.”