She doesn’t know it, but my friend Tiffany is a prophet.

Last week she told me there was no way the puzzle Alex and I are working on would survive the weekend.  Today I am here to tell you, she was 100% right.

…. Maybe I need to pause here and tell you what the heck I’m talking about.

Two weeks ago, Alex and I decided we needed something to do TOGETHER.  So we went to Toys ‘R’ Us and bought a 1500 piece puzzle that depicts a European riverside town.  We both love puzzles, so we thought this was a fantastic idea.

***I will pause here for you all to laugh at our dorkiness.***

We’d been working on the puzzle for a solid week when I realized E was going to be at our house for the Thanksgiving holiday and all that weekend.  He is here most weekends, but we had acquired said puzzle on a weekend when he happened to be with his mom.  So I mentioned to Tiffany in passing: I have no idea how we are going to protect this puzzle from a two-year-old.  Her response was: “Yeah, that puzzle is toast.”

I didn’t agree with her.  I was sure that between Alex and I, we could keep E from destroying our puzzle.  E, himself, loves puzzles, after all.  Surely we could just explain to him that this was our puzzle and he should not play with it.  Right?  RIGHT??!!??  For two days, I was right.  E would walk over to our puzzle and explain to us, “Daddy – ‘Stina’s puzzle, not E’s puzzle.”  He also felt it necessary to show us the “missing” pieces, where we had not yet put everything together.  It was downright cute.  He put his truck puzzle together right next to ours, just so he could be included in the puzzle extravaganza!

Then Friday came.  E was in a particularly… evil toddler-y mood.  I was cleaning while Alex took care of some things at work.  And that’s when it happened.  E walked over to the puzzle while I was washing the kitchen floor, looked at me, smiled angelically, then proceeded to completely destroy the puzzle Alex and I had spent the last week putting together.  Here’s the best part: he gave me a REASON why he tore the whole thing apart.  See, after he did it, he knew he was going to be in trouble.  So he hid.  After he was done hiding, he came over to me and I asked him why he broke the puzzle.  It was at that point that he told me he was trying to put it on the floor because I was cleaning – he was trying to HELP.

You can go ahead and say it.  We are totally screwed.  This kid is already thinking up excuses for why he did something bad and HE IS TWO.

E was pretty embarrassed about breaking up the puzzle.  He told Alex he was sorry, and then he got all shy when I told him to tell my father and my sister about what he did the next day.  But the fact remains: Tiffany was dead-on balls accurate.  Our puzzle was toast.  I took a few pictures of it tonight, when Alex and I began the re-construction process.  By the time I thought to get the camera, we had put some of it back together, so when you look at these pictures keep in mind: E broke apart the WHOLE THING.  All the pieces you see were at one time ASSEMBLED.  The pieces you see in the pictures were all broken apart by E.

Poor puzzle.

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