Marble Mania

Last fall, for Christmas 2007, I bought a little box from either Sam's Club or Costco, containing a lot of parts and some complicated directions. We were at the store and Rich spotted it, and I shrugged, so into the cart it went. After Drew opened his presents, he was understandably distracted for almost a day. And then started begging us to build the marble machine. So Rich opened the box and then spent an hour or so swearing silently to himself while Drew hovered like a hummingbird, darting in and out of the way, wanting to touch everything.

After almost a month, we had to take the marble machine down. It was rather fragile and really didn't work very well. The worm drive kept stalling and getting marbles stuck. And Drew was devastated. We put the machine back into its box and put the box in a closet.

And for a year, every time Drew saw the box, he'd say wistfully "I wish I could play with my marble machine." And "Can I play with my marble machines?" and "May I play with my marble machine, please?"

Yesterday, Drew begged and after some contemplation, we agreed to build the machine. Which is to say, I agreed that Rich could build the machine. So Rich pulled out all the pieces and started preparing to build the machine again.

And again, Rich got frustrated. Not just from Drew's hummingbird hovering, but the set itself is just very difficult. He spent over an hour working on it and then finally pushed back and we put Drew to bed before it was done. After putting Drew to bed, it took Rich almost another hour to set it up.

Rich had looked up reviews last year, and looked at them again this year. They say pretty much the same thing. This is not a children's toy. Anyone attempting to put it together should have an engineering degree. Lucky for us, that's Rich. :)

Today, Drew woke up and after he went downstairs and saw the marble machine and wondered at its magnificence, he came upstairs to say goodbye and gushed about it. After he got home, Drew couldn't peel himself away from the machine. He laughed and giggled and schemed manically at the machine's functions. He literally couldn't stop himself.

Somehow, the machine is better built this year, or Drew is less destructive. It seems to be working better and hasn't fallen apart yet. he is a little more maniacal, though, espeically with the giggles. It got a little nutty when Rich showed Drew how to blow on the marbles to make them go faster. Drew saw the blowing, but couldn't quite wrap his brain around the fact that he needed to blow on the marbles in the chute, over the plastic stopper into which he was blowing instead. It was hilarious.

We take Drew's obsession with the marble machine as a good sign of his mechanical tendencies. Rich certainly hopes so. I figure Drew will be fine one way or another.

The marble machine will be an annual tradition, I suspect. It is unlikely that we can tolerate having it up all year round, but maybe for a month or so around the holidays. Rich is tempted to leave it up in Drew's room, but the reality is that he'd be on repair duty all the time if he does that. So we'll leave it downstairs until we're tired of fixing it and then put it away for eleven months.

Hopefully we manage to avoid such adult-intensive toys in the future, although it seems unlikely given the proliferation of Legos in Drew's Christmas booty this year.