puzzles

I don't think I've mentioned one of Rachel's favorite past times lately. She's a puzzle fanatic. Our fireplace is covered in piles of them and we're desperately in need of some puzzle racks!

There are no puzzles too hard for this girl. Well, that's not actually true. I bought two 60-piece puzzles at a garage sale a few weeks ago that require a little more help from Mommy or Daddy, but this 48 piece puzzle is a snap for her all by herself.

Sometimes she'll spend an hour going from one puzzle to another (and often the same one over and over and over). And she does them all herself (except for the aforementioned 60-piece Arthur puzzles).

She's such a fan that the only souvenirs we brought her from our trip were five different puzzles--this one and a boxed set of four little ones. (And a Grand Canyon t-shirt, but she doesn't really care very much about that).

She still has trouble with this 48 piece one. But just give her time. A few tries and she has them down pat.

When we went to the Day Out with Thomas, Grandma bought her this one.

We thought it would be too hard for her. We were wrong. She zips through it.

And her all-time favorite is a 24 piece Disney Princess puzzle (of course!). It's a breeze for her, but she does it over and over again. I couldn't find an exact picture, but it's almost just like this,except hers also has Snow White and Ariel on it in addition to these princesses.

I've decided that libraries need to have puzzles to lend--they're too expensive to buy a million of them (especially the wooden Melissa and Doug ones she particularly enjoys!), but most kids would love to have different ones to do now and then, wouldn't you think? But since libraries haven't caught on to my idea, I now scour garage sales for them (hence, the huge mess around the fireplace!). Anyone with a puzzle fan nearby want to have a puzzle swap??