There are many frustrating things about being the little brother.
You can’t stay up as late as your older siblings.
You aren’t tall enough to ride all of the best rides.
Your older siblings get to do everything first, and their stuff always looks bigger and better.
—–
Over the course of the past week, Monkey in the Middle and his friends have been building a fort in the woods.
They’ve made a teepee style fort and have gone dumpster diving for things to make it super-duper-cool.
It’s an awesome fort.
Baby Monkey has been feeling some fort-envy, because a) he’s not old enough to walk over to that part of the neighborhood alone, b) even if he was, Monkey in the Middle probably wouldn’t let him join the fort-building fun, and c) if there was ever a born engineer, Baby Monkey is it.
The kid will likely build the first bridge from the Jersey Shore to Portugal when he grows up.
So, after the whole family went and checked out MiM’s fort, last night, Baby Monkey was sitting with me in the kitchen and said “I wish we had woods behind our house, and I could build my own fort.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“What?” he responded.
“Look out the window, you goof.”
(picture above is pre-Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, but it’s still the backyard)
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
So, out we went.
The result of the hurricanes on the woods behind our house was quite beneficial for a boy looking to build a fort.
The trees fell in such a way that it is almost as if they were begging to be made into a fort.
Like, Hurricane Irene meets The Giving Tree.
And so, when he woke up this morning, Baby Monkey got to work.
With his own little brother.
There’s still plenty of work to do.
More logs to be propped up to form the ceiling for the “inside” of the fort.
More rocks to be collected to line the walls for the “patio” of the fort.
Brush to be cleared, treasures to be collected and placed.
But there’s a boy who is ready to do the work, and is proud of his own fort.
Close enough that he can go by himself.
Even though he’s the little brother.
