Time with Papa – Building a BBQ

(April 15, 2012, 31 months old) Since our old barbecue was not quite up to snuff anymore, we figured that it was time to get us a new lean, mean grilling machine. Well, nobody was more excited to get the barbecue built pretty much the moment we pulled into the driveway than Nico, so even though it was not exactly warm and all, we hauled it into the backyard and started to get it all unpacked. And if you think about it – Nico loves to cook, he loves tools and building stuff more and more, so building something that is food-related is pretty much the non-plus-ultra!

Women usually say that men will never pay attention to instructions, but in the case of Nico his gung-ho attitude is more due to the fact that he has no idea what the heck instructions are and patience has never been his greatest virtue so far. He helped with pretty much every piece that came out of the box, pulling it out and putting it on the ground before moving on to the next one (sometimes abandoning the one he was just lifting in favour of getting the next one, which made things a little, eh, challenging some times).

The assembling went fairly quick, given that Nico was sabotaging helping, he held things in place, he screwed (manually and with the electric screwdriver), the wrench etc., so that we actually had the time to use the barbecue to get our dinner going, here you can see the grill version of the Hasselback potatoes, one of our Swedish discoveries of “Around the World in 12 Dishes”, which turned out great, btw!

For Nico it was not just a fun experience to spend some time with me, but also great for hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills by screwing things together, so don’t underestimate what your child can help you with, just calculate a little more time to get it done in the end

If you do this, we’d LOVE to see a photo of it. Email it
to us or post it on our Facebook page. We’d love to do a Facebook album, a Pinterest board and a page of your creations

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