Mission: Crib Assembly -- Current Status: Accomplished! Twice.

The mission was putting the crib together.

My 13 year old and I got down on the floor with all the pieces, and a power drill and got to work.

The directions came stuck to the mattress board, which was fun trying to pull off, it ripped in sections...but we got them peeled away and set to work. We went through the steps 1-7 rather quickly, and we were so very proud of ourselves. We laughed, got frustrated, laughed more, it was fun. I know for sure that without her, it would have been no fun what-so-ever. Doing something like that alone is no fun. I have done furniture assembly alone before, and it's so much better when you have someone to get frustrated with. *chuckles*

So, we get to step 9 and we hit troubled waters. The front rails that rise and lower. It doesn't want to cooperate. It takes us a fair amount of crabbing at it, some unkind words at it, and finally pooling ideas on how to make it work and wah-lah, we get it done. We move through step 10 and 11 no trouble. The crib is assembled, we high five and cheer and we're pleased as punch with our bad selves! *yaaaaaay!*

Power tools in the hands of women... we're awesome.

So we move the crib into the hallway and get stuck at the end, as the hallway is in the shape of a "t" with one room at the end of the "t", and two at the left point of the t and a bathroom at the right hand of the "t". The crib won't fit. We try to stand it on its end. We have to get the crib into my room which is the left point of the "t". It simply isn't going to go. We have to take it all apart and reassemble it in my room.

So we struggle to unwedge it and ourselves from the hallway. We decide to be lazy and only take 1/2 of it apart. We try to get it back there again. This time my 14 year old helps out. Between the three of us and alot of laughing and grouching and more laughing, we find that it isn't going to go. So the 14 year old gives up and goes in her room. My ever faithful, non-tiring 13 year old, who is noted for being a "stick it out till the end" awesome worker... mutters that we should give up till tomorrow and try again. I say Nah, we can do this. Come on, we're warriors, we're not going to let some crib beat us!

So we go into the living room and we finally get the last of it dismantled, which is the railing that goes up and down, that took us a half hour to get to work...We take all the pieces to my room where there is a lot less work space. But! We now know what we're doing and that power drill buzzes as we get the bolts put in and screw this into there, and that into here and wah-lah..we're at the most difficult part. The railing that slides up and down. We grunt. We laugh. We cuss. We laugh. We tug and pull and prod and Finally!!!-we get it attached. And it works.

*Cue the heavenly choir singing us praises here*

She unwraps the new crib mattress and takes the honor of putting it into the crib. We high five, and plop on my bed to stare at the crib. We did good. We invented FIRE kinda feel good.

*laughs* We are women with a power tool and brains! We are proud with our bad selves!! Not only did we put a crib together, we did it TWICE!