larabars, creamcheese, and shovels -- oh my!

I narrowly escaped being THAT MOTHER. You know, the kind that does her kid's homework for him.

Yeah, well, last week, Lam was given an optional homework project: Make a small house out of any material you want, and discuss why you chose that building material and the pros/cons of said material.
Sorta like a spin-off of The Three Little Pigs.

Due date? Wednesday, January 21, 2009. Yes, folks, it's due TODAY.

Of course, Lam left it to the last minute -- he IS my son after all, and heaven knows that the only way I graduated from engineering was all-nighters just before exams.

Anyway, it was 8pm last night when I asked him if he still wanted to do it. He said, "Oh, yeah!", then PANIC ENSUED.

So, I watched my son run around the house, screaming and looking under the couch cushions and at remote controls for inspiration. WTF?
Lam said he wanted something that looked like bricks, but someone was already thinking of using LEGO. He couldn't use that idea! AHHHH!!!

Then I remembered we had a ton of Larabars. "How about those?" "Sure!"

I cut up the Apple Pie Larabars -- it's our least favourite flavour -- into bricks for him, gave him the cream cheese "mortar" in the plastic bag to pipe it on, and let him have at it.
Then he looked at me with those cute little lion cub eyes and said, "Mama, help?"

Crap.

So, I did get dragged back in, and my son and I put together his little house for him. We did it TOGETHER.
And we did a mighty fine job.


When asked the pros and cons of the building material, he said...

"If you were hungry, you can just eat some of your house. But if you eat too much of it, you won't have a house left."

Couldn't have said it better myself. :)

In other news...

Mini hit Lam in the head with a shovel.

An aluminum and balsa wood Dora shovel.

We saw the whole thing, and it was no big deal. No ER, CSI, or NYPD Blue required. My little Xena Warrior Princess was genuinely sorry, and upon inspection, Lam's naturally bumpy skull turned up no new lumps, so we suspect the tears were mainly of aquatic reptilian origin.

But boy, did he milk it.

6 comments:

  1. I use to have the best time working on school projects with my mom when I was younger. I have to say - there were some great projects :-)

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  2. I had to google Larabars.
    lol

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  3. @Kari:
    I loved helping Lam. It was fun. I look forward to more.

    @Su:
    Oops, sorry! LOL I should've put a link in the post. :)

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  4. It looks delicious. How'd you get it by the Don't-Bring-Nuts-Under-Penalty-Of-(an allergic child's)-Death patrol?

    For my little Grade 1-er, I didn't even bother with the pretense of her doing it herself. We did it together and I rationalized it by the fact that we talked a lot about straw (raffia, actually) houses and many other things. We took a trip together to the craft store to find what materials we should use, and she made up the entire yard. So, um. quality time. Yeah...

    My little Grade 3er in the same class had chosen match-sticks (craft ones - which we had on hand for some weird reason) for a wooden house. There was never any doubt that she was doing it herself, but it took some "convincing" for her to do it my way i.e. so it wouldn't fall down, resulting in much greater trauma and household upheaval.

    It looks *really* delicious. I'm going to go get some lunch...

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  5. @harmzie:
    yeah, that was a MAJOR screwup on my part. I didn't even think of he nut thing until I'd given it to Ms.S and gone home. I'd included the wrappers in with the project and asked Lam if he could alert all not to go near it.
    By project due date, the nut oils should have settled/dissipated, and no one should be eating it anyway... but still...

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  6. bring it to me. I'll take care of it.
    (still hungry)

    I mean, I don't want anyone getting in trouble.

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