A Yuletide Tilt-up Construction Project

When you promise something as a parent, you better be prepared to deliver.

For example, we told Lij that we would make a gingerbread house for Christmas. We had planned to do it the Monday before Christmas, but we had just made cookies the night before and didn’t really want more sweets around the house. Plus, we’d spent a large chunk of the day at the fish store, leaving no time to fix the building materials for that particular construction endeavor. So, mommy and daddy decided to forgo the gingerbread house.

But Lij has a good memory. Just before bed on Monday, he reminded us that we hadn’t made gingerbread houses yet that day and therefore couldn’t go to bed. We explained our reasons for not building the house. He proceeded to let us know, as only Lij can, that not building a gingerbread house would ruin his whole Christmas. Completely. Forever.

So, since Lij was pretty good about handling his disappointment after his initial complaint and since Christmas is all about catering to our children’s every whim making our kids happy, after spending the morning at the zoo, we spent the afternoon and eve of Christmas Eve building gingerbread houses.

We baked our own gingerbread (using templates created by Bob Villa of all people!) and made our own icing “glue.” Because we made our own materials, we were able to make the houses small enough for each of the boys to get their own to decorate. It was fun to see their personalities come through in their decorating.

Lij did his own thing until he saw all the other houses and then he had to use everybody else’s ideas on his too.

Oblivious to all else around him, Dylan concentrated very hard on creating patterns of color on his house. The kid is like a little Rothko: obsessed with color fields.

And then there’s Nicholas, who like Sal and her blueberry pail, had trouble decorating his house at all since somehow the candy seemed to always end up in his mouth instead of on the house.

Maddy sat by watching the proceedings with the indignant displeasure of one who only has four and ¼ teeth.