Pinterest fails #1

I have mentioned before my aching desire for my boy to sleep in beyond 4.30 am. In order to achieve this, we do our level best to exhaust the little tyke every day in the hope that he will need more hours’ kip. But where that fails, and it almost always does, I like to leave him a little selection of activities set up so he can play independently when he comes down, leaving us to languish in bed until 6 if we’re very lucky. (This doesn’t happen. Ever. Sometimes he leaves us for up to 20 minutes, but anything beyond that would be a bloody miracle!)

I am always on the look out for a new activity that will pique his interest and doesn’t involve anything potentially hazardous for either the boy or the soft furnishings (I don’t want to sleep that much). So, when I saw this little gem of an idea, I skipped off to amazon for some velcro dots and lolly pop sticks, as quick as you can say ‘buy now’!

I love this little idea – I was going to put velcro on both sides to add versatility, and make it less prescribed than what is shown in the pic. Being a bit of a cheapskate, I was really taken with how cheap it was to get what I needed – the velcro I bought was £2.49. (I know this is pretty cheap, but it was the same one as they had used in a tutorial I saw online) Lolly sticks? £1.47 for 100 of the colourful dudes. When they arrived, Jet and I got busy sticking the velcro on and he seemed really into the whole thing.

He couldn’t wait to start sticking them together to make shapes 😀 😀 😀 Great! I thought. This bodes well. I cuddled myself inwardly, thinking longingly of all the sleep I was going to win back as a result of this genius come morning time (20 minutes, approximately) and gave pinterest a cyber high five.

What actually happened:

The title of this post may have already given away the fact that the outcome was not quite what I had dreamed of.

You know how velcro is amazingly hold-your-body-weight strong? Well, guess what? faced with the force required to pull the sticks apart, the furry velcro’s love for his hooky brother won over against the so-called might of the self adhesive. In other words, the dot preferred to stick to the opposite dot than the stick it had been stuck to. Having happily built a few crazy shapes with the lolly sticks of joy, Jet realised that whenever he tried to take them apart and make something new, the sticky dots came unstuck from the sticks. Here’s the result:

Bless his heart, so taken with them was Jet, that he just carried out some quick repairs and soldiered on. It might not have actually worked, but he made it work for him, resourceful little man 😀

Now, I thought this one was pretty much a no-brainer, but clearly not. If anyone can clear up for me what I actually did wrong, I would appreciate it!

Or maybe the original poster is having the same problem, but has chosen not to document that particular part?