It's a fort

Thanks to a wisely purchased warranty on the jogging stroller, the old stroller and its tears and kinks went back to the store for a shiny replacement. We were not deliberately hard on the original unit. It just developed some random tearing on the storage basket and our collective light bulbs went off as we smiled remembering the warranty sitting safe and sound in the drawer upstairs.

So we ended up with a purple rig in place of the old green one. Aside from the joy Henry experienced at helping assemble his new ride, his heart soared at the box left behind. It's a joy that has not diminished over the past 2 months.

Becky beamed that Henry had found a little house.

"It's a fort," I stated plainly.

Becky told a few stories about how she had used large boxes to construct play houses with kitchens and the like.

"Fair enough. But he's a boy and this is his fort."

She accepted this and let it sink in.

"At some point he'll need guns to defend it."

It's currently the home of his fire truck as well as the place he crawls when we let him have the blinking rear bicycle light. So perhaps it's a disco fort at times.

The only certain fact is that if we threw it away, there would be an uncountable amount of mourning time. The fort is staying.



If Henry eats all his healthy meals like a good boy, he is allowed some sweets. Not many, but some. We combined peanut butter with a small chocolate chip recently and found a hilariously predictable jolt to his system.