Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life

Graduation

Since he turned 4 recently, Rachel gave the go-ahead to get Jared some new, smaller Legos. So I did.

We are lucky in that we live reasonably near an actual Lego store and Jared has had a lot of fun playing there while Rachel shopped elsewhere in the mall. Last Sunday, after swim class, we stopped off at the mall. Rachel went in search of a sun hat for Sara and I took Jared to the Lego store. Jared played with the legos set out for kids to play with while I looked at the sets. Jared really likes building cars, but the Big Bucket O' Legos contains no wheels. The advantage of the Lego store over, say, Target is that the Lego store has a wall of bins full of unusual parts.

For $12.95 I filled a large-soda-sized cup with wheels, windshields, seats, and steering wheels, along with flat pieces, glass blocks, and so on. I packed it carefully to maximize the amount of bricks I could fit in the cup, with the flat pieces around the outside, wheels in the middle and other pieces tucked in and around the rest. The tires were mounted on the wheels and the wheels were on the axle bricks; all the axle bricks were put together, making a nice compact package. I also picked up two cheap kits to make a construction digger. These each had four wheels, a person, and a few other nifty pieces. Plus, they make a digger, which I know Jared thinks is cool.

Last night, while Rachel and Sara were in the shower, I opened it all up for Jared. He dove right in and started building a car. He still has a lot of trouble getting the bricks to go together the way he wants them to, but he'll get better with practice. This all has the advantage of making life easier for those wanting to give Jared a gift; more Legos are always welcome. And before anyone asks, when he gets a little older, I'll dig my old original Mindstorms kit out of the attic for the kids too. In the meantime, we'll -- I mean he'll have plenty of fun making cars, houses, spaceships, and so on.

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