April 19 A Charlie Crisis

Friday:  On my short list today was repairing our marionette bird puppet--CHARLIE. I had gotten him out of his closet hiding place and played with him with Cal on Wednesday. I never actually let Cal run around with Charlie--because his strings get tangled up so easily--but somehow, he managed to get more tangled than I had ever seen him before. Poor Charlie!

To no avail I tried to untangle the four strings, but the more I tried, the worse Charlie got! It was hopeless! When Kaity was here last night, we looked at the problem together. Kaity's usually pretty adept at untangling Charlie for me; and actually, when Kaity plays with Charlie, he does not get tangled! She worked with his strings for awhile, but this time she was unable to straighten him out.

I told Kaity that I thought the only way to fix Charlie was to cut his strings and re-string him--she agreed; so that's what I did today. I cut his four strings and then hot-glued them, one-by-one, back to their cross-sticks. Then I made a little cardboard square piece, wrote CHARLIE on it, and hot-glued that to his sticks. I'm hoping this little "square" prevents, or at least discourages, the strings from crossing over and getting so ridiculously tangled.

I also decided to store Charlie in a bin on the top shelf in the playroom--that way, he doesn't have to hang on a hanger, stressing his strings out. The top shelf is out of reach for the little kids, and he fits perfectly in the bin!