Of Course, The Best Things In Life Are Often Free*

I need to start this post by saying that the important thing to remember is we eventually had fun.

Crankypants was the watchword one particular morning several weeks ago, following a night's sleep that ended several hours before our typical wake-up time. The usual toys and activities weren't cutting it, so I went in search of an unexpected (and hopefully pleasing) distraction.

I found two. They both looked like this:

Boxes are always a big hit around here, so I was feeling good about my offering.

It was all going so well for about 5 minutes and then disaster struck.

Disaster that came in the form of Nate tearing his box to pieces and wanting Mommy to "Fix It!". And of course, I could not. No one could have. There wasn't enough tape or glue in the world to fix that box.

The meltdown was epic. Seth after all still had a perfectly intact box he was happily playing with and Nate was left with a handful of shredded cardboard. Well, technically the shredded cardboard was in my hands at that point. Nate had already turned into a puddle on the floor. 

It was time to pull out the big guns, but I was at a loss. The butter boxes were my big guns after all. 

At least until I remembered the boxes that had arrived from Amazon only a few days earlier, still filled with books for Christmas.

I could barely empty them and get them into the nursery fast enough.

Big guns indeed! Those boxes kept everyone entertained and happy on and off not only that day, but for the next week and then some. 

And once again, if the pics aren't enough to do this scene justice, there's a video of all the hijinks here (meltdown not included). 

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*The boxes came with purchase, so technically they were "free", but the contents were not. Free is sometimes relative, but had the boxes not made for such great entertainment they were otherwise headed for recycling. That still counts, right?

- L. 

PS. This was the first time my boys chose their own outfits for the day – which is what I naively thought this post was originally going to be about before everything went sideways – so it deserves a brief mention. I thought it was interesting that they wanted to wear the same thing – and were quite vocal about it too. At this point, I'm 100% sure that orange is their mutually favorite color. It's been more than a few weeks since these pics were taken, but since that time I've had to put the "unge" shirts on an as-yet-undetermined sabbatical in a secure location because I've grown tired of looking at them. Fortunately "out of sight, out of mind" is a real thing. For a couple of weeks there, this was the only outfit either of them wanted to wear. 

PPS. In case you are wondering about everyone's crazy hair, we had French Toast for breakfast that morning and there was some self-styling with the syrup going on. Syrup is a pretty impenetrable product as it turns out, so everyone looked like this until evening bath time. 

PPPS. The aforementioned Bath Toys™ are very much front and center in this post too. Really, if you don't already own a set, do yourself a favor and get some. They are the next best thing to "free" boxes.