Puzzled

This jewel has been sitting on our living room coffee table for 2.5 years now. We got it during the holiday break in 2004, and time has confirmed the frustrating difficulty of working with pieces that are nearly all of the same color. It seemed like a good idea at the time to get us all into the Christmas spirit but I was wrong, and lately when I've said, "Hey, let's work on the puzzle," I get blank stares that are worse than the ones I usually receive when I've asked everyone if they've finished their school work. When the nightmare is over it will look like this:

Normally, my girls are avid puzzle workers right down to the youngest two who always surprise me with their knack for connecting pieces together. Even Dad participates once we get started so I think I've been relatively successful in creating a family tradition, however, no one has touched this for quite some time now. Okay, years. So I've been spending the last week or two trying to motivate everyone to wrap this one up over the summer so we can start a new one.

The girls usually get a couple new puzzles each Christmas, but last year I refrained from buying any due to the developing stockpile we've begun to accumulate. When we finish a puzzle, I lay it out on cardboard and brush each side with a few coats of Mod Podge which is basically a shiny sealer that has an adhesive.

Then we hang it up on the wall. This was our second puzzle. Our first came to an untimely death. We use to slip the puzzle board under the couch when we weren't working on it. One of my little darlings fell asleep on the couch one evening without making the routine trip to relieve herself before bedtime and woke up to a soiled cushion which had leaked clear through the bottom. Gotta love how much a child's bladder can hold! Lucky for me, the puzzle had served as a thick barrier between the couch and the carpet and my only part of the clean-up was discarding the soiled puzzle pieces into the trash. Dad got the sofa.

Of course, I'm always looking for the benefits in doing anything educational with my children. Studies have shown that they do develop spatial awareness and hand eye coordination as well as analytical, abstract, and concrete thinking skills that are needed to become adept at doing a jigsaw puzzle.

A great way to establish family bonding is to do an activity where everyone works together to accomplish a project, no?

Unfortunately in our household, puzzling becomes a dog eat dog race (pushing included) to see who can put the last few remaining pieces in place. Dad decided to hide the very last piece of the puzzle above so we could all go crazy and accuse each other of losing it...how's that for creating a relaxed natural environment where family members can communicate and build relationships and participate in teamwork.

When we finished this puzzle there was one piece missing again, but this time Dad was not the culprit. We had worked so hard that I even contacted the company to see if we could buy another puzzle for that one piece. I even lowered myself to the lovely task of opening up the filthy vacuum bag to sort through six months of dead spiders, webs, hair, etc. to no avail. Still, I just couldn't bring myself to throw it away so I put it under the couch. Nearly a year later, my youngest found it in one of the shoes in our closet. How's that for a miracle!

These days when electronic forms of entertainment provide the means for our children to become more individualistic and non-social, puzzling continues to be a fun way for our family to stay connected with each other.