Month 21: Puzzles

Xuan’s latest interest is doing puzzles. She loves it, and is really good at it too. Sometimes I wonder if having an interest or hobby is something that can be passed from generation to generation genetically? You see, H’s hobby used to be doing jigsaw puzzles. The walls in his parents’ house used to be lines with his 1000 pieces puzzles. After we started dating, he had less and less time to do puzzles, as he was travelling for work from Sunday night until Friday night. And he spent the rest of his time with me.



Once, he bought a 2000 piece puzzle of a beautiful autumn scene in a park, I told him that it reminded me of my university campus. We did the puzzle together, but it was really huge, and took us so long...when we had to move house, we carefully packed the completed parts together in the box, to be transported to our new home...but so far, we have not unpacked it and finished it. Perhaps Xuan will help us finish it when she is bigger?


This is just one of the ways Xuan takes after H, just like the identical green circle birthmark that they both have on their left shoulder, it is H’s “chop” on her, to show that she is his.


Xuan started doing a 20 piece Winnie the Pooh puzzle, when she was 17 months old. It took her less than a week to master that. Then we gave her more and more complex puzzles, until now, she can do a 48 piece puzzle with odd shapes and sizes. She can even do a 80 piece puzzle, that is separated into 4 sections of 20 pieces. She loves doing puzzles so much, that she would destroy the puzzled saying “mix mix, again again” immediately after she puts in the last piece, leaving her admirers no time to “ooohhh” and “aaahhhh” over the completed picture!