Come fly with us

Will has really been into paper airplanes lately, making a bunch of them at day care and kindergarten, then stashing them in his backpack. So yesterday when we are at Barnes & Noble, and he saw a paper airplane kit, it made perfect sense to take it home with us. Will paid for the $10 kit with his own money, and was very excited to get change back.

Upon returning home, Will opened up the kit and was excited by the different types of paper in the box. I was overwhelmed by the 10 or so different blueprints, each requiring 20-plus steps and extensive use of fractions.

Still, we plunged forward, gathering materials and equipment to make the plane. Will asked for a glider. The first step called for cutting the paper -- and I realized that the paper included in the kit was 1/2-inch too small for these plans. Nice.

So I made the plane's fuselage (Will had a fun time with that word) out of plain, heavy white paper. Over the course of the next hour or so, I measured, folded, cut, cursed, and glued my hand to the kitchen table. Will did a great job bringing me what we needed to keep it going. At one point, I muttered to Jana, "This better be the best paper airplane we've ever seen."

And it sort of was. Even after decorating it with the paper from the kit, it still didn't look like much.

But like the Millennium Falcon before it, our plane may have been short on style, but it was long on substance. Will's first throw, which I expected to result in an immediate nosedive and crash into the floor, actually resulted in a smooth, graceful flight.

Will has taken to calling this plane an "upper-case plane" because it is larger than the pre-made plane that came with the kit, which he calls the "lower-case plane."

The plane has since crashed several hundred times and been in and out of Charlie's mouth, so it's losing its structural integrity. But it will always hold a special place in our hearts.