How to freak out your daughter

After nearly two months of precision work, with eyes for detail and deft hands, my lovely daughters recently finished putting together their Lego toys.

Not surprisingly, considering her proclivity for all things Star Wars (where did she get that?), my Audrey received a Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon for Christmas.  It has 1,254 pieces.  1,254.  It’s a remarkable thing, this vehicle.  It even has the table on which Chewbacca and C-3PO played chess, or wizard chess, or whatever game that was.

A little more surprisingly, my Anna asked for and received from Santa a Lego Star Wars Death Star.  The box this thing came in made me think that we received all the pieces for the actual Death Star – it’s that big.  This set has – steady – 3,803 pieces.  Remarkable.  They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I don’t think the real Death Star was built in a short period of time, but this Death Star was indeed finished after only two short months of sporadic work.

Both of these creations have been residing, partially finished, in our living room since Christmas.  Today, the girls wanted them up in their room.  Audrey had no problem hauling her Millennium Falcon up the stairs – it’s not too unwieldy – but Anna took one tug at her Death Star and was right away dissuaded from doing any more.

She asked if I’d bring it upstairs for her, a request I could hardly refuse.

Note: At this point, I should tell you that Legos had already taken over our house, in the form of other, smaller, Star Wars vehicles; Pretty Princess Pet Shops/Vet Clinics; Pretty Princess Tree Houses; Pretty Princess Science Labs; Pretty Princess Architecture Studios…  They’ve all been in consistent cycles of put-together and totally-taken-apart through the months.  Today, they were all in certain states of un-put-togetherness, strewn about together in a box in the girls’ room.

Also, if you don’t have children, or have forgotten how loud Lego pieces are when dumped on the floor – let me tell you, it’s a noise you can’t miss even from a floor away.  The plastic is carefully formulated to make the most noise possible when jambled together with each other.

So, picture a fairly good-sized box with 400,000 Lego pieces, at the ready.

Got it?

Okay.

So, there I was, hefting Anna’s Death Star upstairs.  I made it to her room, gently placed it on the floor under a window, and breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t drop it.  The box with 400,000 pieces was right there, though, and…

I cried out, “Oh, crap!”, and dumped the box of loose Lego pieces violently to the floor.

The girls were still in the living room, so I don’t know for certain what the reaction was… but I think I probably took ten years off both their lives.  Poor girls.

But – I have a secret plan to make it up to them tomorrow.  They’re going to LOVE it.