The Tale of Two Children

David was bored the other day and moping around the house.  I suggested a few ideas to him, none of which appealed.  That's when I got the idea that he could design a pinewood derby car using one of the kits that I had stashed away.

Of course the girls instantly decided they just had to make their own cars, but I only had two kits, so Lizzy won the second one.  Hubby got out the power tools and cut the blocks of wood into the desired shapes.  Lizzy thought she was done and was ready to start painting.  No, no, no, dear.  It's time to sand.

They sanded for five minutes tops and declared their cars done.  I said they had to keep going to make their cars smooth and to get rid of the cut lines from the power tools.  I said that it could take them a few days of working at it to get them just right.  Lizzy whined that it was going to take forever to finish.  David just kept sanding.

Lizzy sanded for maybe twenty minutes and then gave up.

David sanded...

and sanded for about an hour that day.

We bought finer grained sand paper at the store.  As soon as we got home, David got it out of the bag and was on the front porch sanding (I kicked them out of the kitchen after I discovered they also sanded my kitchen table).  Lizzy sanded for a few minutes while David kept on sanding...

Lizzy clearly is fully invested in her sanding project

And sanding...

until I called him in for lunch and he declared his truck was done and smooth as glass.

He washed off the sawdust with a rag and set the truck out to dry and went to mow the lawn.  He painted it later that day--one coat of green.  He said it was done.  Hubby told him it needed another layer of green.  So he painted it again and said it was done.  I said it needed windows or some sort of detailing, so he painted it again.  I tried to get him to do another round of painting, but he put his foot down and hammered in the wheels, declaring it completely done.

Lizzy gave up on her car after a few rounds of sanding.  I'm sure it'll eventually be finished, maybe by the end of the summer.  Meanwhile, David is having fun rolling his car down the driveway and doing lots of experiments seeing how different weights affect the speed of his car.