The old fort rises again

Saturday was fort day. Since Cousin Jack messed with Siri's fort on Friday morning, Siri wanted a re-do. We have a couch in the basement that is a hand-me-down from my mom. It's actually a great couch that was probably top of the line in the 70s or 80s when my Great Aunt Amy bought it. It doesn't compare to the couch we had as a kid though, from a fort-building perspective.

That old couch was an awful brown. The fabric was heavily textured. It was an old-school sectional with lots of pillows. We would build the walls around the sides with the seat cushions and then make a roof out of the back cushions. There were so many back cushions that you could make a huge dome at the corner of the sectional where the two wings right-angled away from each other.

It's hard to recreate that with my girls considering the limited pillow resources. But we had our fun. No Cousin Jack around to wreck the place. And I discovered that if I built a door at one side then Fliss would use it rather than wreck the fort by plowing through a wall.


Here's the fort. Not too spectacular. Fliss is demonstrating her use of the door. Of course, I'm a jaded adult. Jaded by the puny size of this fort compared to my big body. And jaded by the imaginings of that fort I had when I was a kid. I swear the dome was as big as our living room is now. But the real beauty of a couch fort can only be beheld from the kids' perspective.


I asked Siri to take this picture of Fliss from the inside. She's VERY content!


And here Siri is, happy as a little hobbit in her hole.


What would fort pictures be without a demonstration? As you can see, one SaHD's head is almost as big as the whole door. Did I say almost? How did my head get so big?


For all of you thinking that I was way too good a dad for building and playing with the fort, think again. I had a pile of laundry almost as tall as Siri to do. This doesn't seem like a lot. But I had only done it three days before that. I think my kids get clean clothes too often. I'm going to have to add "make my kids wear their pajamas for a week straight" to my list of labor-saving devices. Of course, since my wife has accused me of letting my girls wear their pajamas all day on my header that she so lovingly designed for me, that would mean that my girls would wear their pajamas and only their pajamas for a week straight (talk about labor saving devices!). I wonder if that's how Charles Schultz got the idea for the Pig Pen character. . . .