Potty Training

This puzzle was one of my favorite Christmas presents from Don. The box called it an "impossible" puzzle because the pattern repeats and there are 750 + 5 puzzle pieces, where the +5 represents extra pieces that look like they should go somewhere but don't. They are there just to fool the person doing the puzzle.

I did a lot of work on this puzzle from when I got it to when I started my new job. It was a nice distraction. The firs step was assembling the babies.

The puzzle went away for a bit, then came out later. During that time I got some of the babies to match together, and then I worked my way through the field of gray. Believe it or not, there is a slight color variation. Eventually there was enough there to go piece by piece, and having a discard box helped make sure I wasn't repeatedly trying the same piece in the same spot -- as I joked with my visitors last weekend, it kept me from saying "It didn't work the last 3 times, but, it will work this time!"

A couple I knew from college randomly called and asked to visit last weekend. They like puzzles too. With their help, we were able to complete the puzzle, with the exception of 1 piece. It appeared to be missing. I later found it hiding under the slipcover of one of the chairs around the table. We discovered one last sneaky thing about the puzzle was that the actual puzzle did not match the picture on the box! The top part was a fairly good match (which had been a great help as I began to assemble the puzzle) but the bottom part had a slight variation.

The puzzle in some ways reminded me of the wedding planning. There were times I looked at the pieces and said, "There is no way we have all the pieces." (Don had got the puzzle second-hand, so, unless I wanted to sit there and count, there was no way of knowing we had all the pieces.) But, time and time again, the pieces fit together. Not necessarily in the manner I initially thought they would or should, but in the end it all works out for the best.

Oh, and if you look closely at the flowers, you can see a train in one of them. We noticed it when we were assembling the puzzle, but I am at a loss for where it is at the moment. Maybe I'll post again later with the location.

(P.S. -- Happy Feast of St. Joseph)