The Boy™ and I built our first model.



An Italeri 1/35 scale [Oops--Sudden Onset of Illiteracy--it's a 1/72] mock-up of this little number, the Sd. Kfz. 234/2 Puma armored car:




It was his choice--a birthday present. He was jonesing to go back to the hobby store after getting a monster truck model last year, and the Puma makes perfect sense from his 4 year old perspective: it's a wheeled vehicle that blows things up. I like the Italeri kit because it offers two approaches--detailed and wargamer. The detailed version is just that--more historically accurate. However, the kit advises that this method is much more complicated and fragile. Given that it's been forever since I've assembled a model that involved glue, I picked "wargamer" in a heartbeat. Good call, dad. It's held up pretty well so far. Now all we have to do is add the decals and paint it. We were going to do it today, but since he broke the cannon (I fixed it), I told him he'd have to wait.


Now the only problem is that he wants to take a spin in the real thing. And Maddie wants in on the action--except that she's gunning for a battleship. She overheard me telling Dale that my first model was a BB--the U.S.S. Massachusetts, in fact.


And so it begins.