I never intended to take up Lego building in my mid-thirties (and yes, 37 is still mid-thirties). I never did Legos as a kid and quite honestly, I don't remember ever being introduced to them (whether too expensive, or what, I don't know....). My brother never had an interest, that I recall.
As my boys got to be 6 and 9, I thought we'd skipped the "Lego phase"...they have friends that have been Lego-obsessed for YEARS and it never rubbed off. I had a castle set in THE CLOSET (which has now been decluttered and converted into Torin's closet, with space for my crafts, WOO HOO!) and one morning I woke up to a quiet house (things that make you go "hmmmmm") and the boys were in the living room floor playing with it! (Unfortunately, this just re-enforces the pack rat tendencies that I need to boot....and I'm having a sense of deja vu here- I musta blogged about this already, lol)
And that was the end of life as I knew it..... Webkinz are now not so cool. All the boys' spending money ( including the Disneyland spending money they were given!) is spent on Legos kits. We spend time on legos.com and ebay searching for piece and parts and
mini-figs (I didn't even know wtf a "mini-fig" was until my sweet hubby let me in on it.)
The boys really haven't been building like they did that first morning anymore... they buy the sets (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Spy somethingoranother...), put the sets together, and put them up on the shelves. They PLAY with them- all sorts of wonderful inventive play :) And my role of Lego Mama has evolved because Torin really loves putting the sets together, but gets overwhelmed if he has to sit there with the booklet and put the whole thing together by himself...you know, one little row off and nothing fits together right!! So we're like a Lego-building team :) one of us finds the pieces we need next, and the other puts them in place. Sometimes he gets too tired and just wants me to do the whole thing for him...and that's when the voices, the tapes-in-my-head, start whining..."you have other stuff to do", "if you do it for him he'll never learn how himself", etc, etc. The same voices that sometimes bother me when I'm picking up shoes and pillow cushions for the millionth time, lol. And the truth is, those voice can kiss my ass! Every moment is a choice...and I choose to do things that make me happy. Putting together Legos for my son is no big thang ;) and it makes him happy. And what's he going to "learn"? He's going to learn how good it feels to do things for other people, because he sees that in my face...
and you know what? I've discovered that I L-O-V-E building Lego sets! How f'n cool is that? :)
