A moment in time

Last Spring we purchased the movie Meet the Robinsons, which has become one of my favorite children's movies of all time: The villain is adorable; the music is awesome; the message of perseverance is so positive; and the poignancy of the main character's family situation makes me all misty-eyed, no matter how many times I've seen it. Wonderful, wonderful little movie.

Uno found it inspiring in other ways: It prompted her to build a time machine.

The first time she mentioned the project, I told her it sounded like a great idea but secretly hoped the whim would pass. We are not handy; we do not build things around here. She kept asking, though -- every day, several times a day: Can I build my time machine today? How about tomorrow? Will you take me to the hardware store? Here's what we need to get....

I continued to put her off, wary of a construction project, worried that she would expect it to actually work and be heartbroken when it didn't. But her enthusiasm wore off on me: I pictured her and DH hammering 2x4s in the back yard, bonding, building a time machine to Uno's specs (she had even drawn a blueprint by then) that could at least serve as a play house when they finished.

Real life intervened, of course (which is probably a good thing -- as I said, we are not handy; the play house would not have been up to code). But Uno, having internalized the theme of the movie, continued to ask about the project. We compromised: I told her we could build a model time machine as practice for some [far-distant] future real time machine. We went to Hobby Lobby that weekend, loaded up on balsa wood, decorative wooden craft thingies, spray paint, and clocky scrapbook stickers, and the next Monday evening the whole family sat down together to help her build.







We finished gluing the time machine that night and put it downstairs in the storage room to set, with the intention of painting and decorating it later. Days passed, then weeks. "Can we paint the time machine today?" Uno would ask, and I'd always have some reason why we couldn't: Painting is an outside project, and it's too cold / windy / rainy; we've got too many other things to do today; let's do it on a weekend when Dad has time to help us.... Months passed and still it sat in the darkness of our basement storage room.

Thank goodness for kindergarten.

Yesterday Uno had her very first public school Show-and-Tell opportunity. She wanted to make it count, so we pulled out the time machine and some cans of spray paint on Tuesday evening. Uno and Dos took turns (with my help on their trigger fingers to make sure they didn't spray paint in their eyes) beautifying the balsa wood. We let it dry over night, and then yesterday morning before school (her class meets in the afternoon) I helped Uno super glue the rest of the decorations onto the time machine.

Here it is, finally completed:







And here is Uno, practicing her Show and Tell presentation:



When I picked her up after school, I asked her how everything went. "My teacher said it was a great project," she said, "and at recess me and Sara and Rebekah pushed all the buttons right so that when it's my birthday we'll all transport to the movies with popcorn and candy and lemonade!"

I had worried that she would feel disappointed when it didn't really take her back or forward in time, but I can see that her imagination has made the appropriate adjustments; apparently it is a delayed-reaction time machine. She probably will get to go to the movies for her birthday (a tradition that seems to be supplanting our West Texas custom of going to Chuck E. Cheese), so maybe she did push all those buttons right.


~RCH~