Wow, we hit 4 yrs old and all Will wants to do is put together Lego sets. Nowadays, Legos come in all different “sets” to build a specific space ship, truck, airplane, scene, etc. Maybe it’s always been this way, but when I was younger, we just had a box of miscellaneous legos and used our imaginations to build various things. Or, it's possible I just got the leftovers after my five brothers went through the sets first!
Will received the miscellaneous box of regular size “little” legos for Christmas in 2009. On his fourth birthday, his cousins, Peter, Erik and Kurt gave him his first lego "set," the camper (so CUTE!). Jeff took it out of the package one day and gave him a brief tutorial on how to read the instructions. He put the whole camper together only asking for help about 5-6 times. Since then, he’s received 4-5 other lego sets and he puts them together without ANY help! Some of these lego sets are for ages 7-12. He amazes me. I thought after he put each lego set together a couple times, the novelty of that specific set would wear off, but nope! He just continues the cycle. He’ll build them all, then take them apart and start all over again. There have been days where he gets up, starts building, breaks for breakfast, goes back to building, breaks for lunch, goes back to building, breaks for nap, builds, breaks for dinner, then builds until bedtime. This kid has an extraordinary attention span!
It makes for a very peaceful day until Wyatt wonders into Will’s room. Will is very protective of his Legos and Wyatt wants to be part of whatever Will is doing. Wyatt will pick up a completed or partially completed set and want to play with it. Will freaks out. I run into the room just in time to see Wyatt’s brain working, thinking, How will Will react if I take this apart? Enter Mom to save the day.
In an attempt to keep all the lego sets organized with their specific pieces, I’ve used large zip lock bags, wrote the set name on them, then drew a picture of the set on the bag so Will can recognize which set goes in which bag. This is after weeks of getting the pieces all mixed up and having the headache of sorting them all out, or losing pieces, which in one case, Jeff even opened up the vacuum cleaner bag to sift through to retrieve any pieces that were accidentally sucked up. That was disgusting! Going forward, we’ve decided to note which pieces are missing and we will order them on a replacement site.
The duplo sets are great for Wyatt and we’ve tried to keep these toys separate between the boys. Will can’t play with Wyatt’s Duplo legos and Wyatt shouldn’t play with Will’s. It’s one of the few things that we try to keep separated so they have “their own” – at least for now!
A trip to Lego Land is in our near future!
Some pictures of Will's completed sets:
