bonnie & jason

What a week!

It’s been quite a week in the Wang household. First, Alissa started preschool:

You can see her all ready to go with her lunch box and everything. She’s going three days a week and so far so good. She had a few small issues, but for the most part, the teachers said she was doing fine… and talks a lot… and wants to help with ev.er.y.thing. I think Bonnie was probably the most effected by it. Her little girl is growing up! I have to admit that I did have some separation anxiety when I dropped her off each of the three days. But I stayed disciplined and didn’t even call to see how she was doing. (Instead, I relied on Bonnie’s phone calls and subsequent reports.)

In other Alissa news, she finally made some good progress with potty training. She had a couple accidents here and there, but nine times out of ten, she’s able to tell us that she needs to go potty and makes a successful, “deposit.”

With all the success, her crayon box has become quite full. (She gets a new crayon and an M&M with every successful attempt.) The cheapo plastic box that she uses to hoard all these crayons has pretty much been defective since day one so I used some scrap wood from my other projects and a hinge I stole from a binder to make her a nice wooden box. I still need to get a latch for the front, but it’s pretty much done.

It’s mostly 1×3 solid birch and 1/4″ birch plywood. I put a 1/4″ dado on the bottom to accept the bottom panel and made the lid with some 1×2 that I ripped to about 3/4″x3/4″ with a rabbet to accept the top panel. It’s just glued together since I’m lazy and didn’t want to fill in nail holes. Plus, I figure it’s only going to hold crayons so the not insignificant strength of wood glue should be plenty strong enough for this little box. Finally, I put a 1/4″ radius on most of the edges so if/when Alissa drops it, there’s less chance of her damaging our hardwood floors. Oh, and the finish is a couple coats of Minwax cherry stain with polyurethane. Fun little project. Learned a lot. Specifically that my woodworking skills still leave a lot to be desired.