Thursday, January 5, 2012

There is a special place in heaven for Lego builders...

I don't remember my big boys being into Lego as much as Wilson is... I often find his little men posed in precarious scripted scenes around the house. It may be an obsession. His walls are framed with Lego posters, the shelves (in his bedroom and downstairs) are full of his creations and not a day passes without someone in the family suffering a Lego injury. I am pretty sure there is someone at the dump who filters my vacuum cleaner bags and makes a living selling our Lego loss on eBay.

Of course this Christmas it was nothing out of the ordinary for Wilson to have Lego at the top of his list... (actually, there was nothing else on his list). Wilson is always very keen to open ALL the Lego bags, laying them ALL over his floor in order to start work immediately. With some of the big Lego enterprises Wilson usually needs some help. The problem is, if help is not sought early a mistake in the building will have compounded, and a LOT of time can be spent searching and correcting the error and rebuilding. This year to prevent frustration we worked with Wil early in the piece (so to speak).

Adam doesn't do Lego... so the job is usually divided between Angus and myself. This year we had our lovely visitor Nadine to assist. Wilson could not believe his luck, all these attentive Lego building assistants willing to walk him through the creation, collecting pieces and providing encouragement. Angus and I having been through this soooo many times before and we both skived off for a while and left Nadine with Wilson to continue with the project.

I came back an hour later and could hear the strain in Nadine's voice... the quality time, the novelty of it had worn off. I understood... Anyways, we got to a point where we could have a break from it and two weeks later nothing more has been done. Nadine has taken off touring around the island, I have been studying and Wilson has had enough play dates that he has not been pressing to get the Lego project finished... until yesterday... he asked me to work on it again with him...

Wilson grew very fond of Nadine while she was here. It may be due to the fact she played charades, jumped on the trampoline or because she gave him chocolate for Christmas, however I suspect it had a lot to do with her Lego building tenacity. He has been missing Nads and asks every day when she will return. Comments like, 'She's got our car, she will be coming back won't she?', 'I want Nadine to be my Aunty' and this morning, 'I want Nadine to come back, can you get me cornflakes'.

In order to allow Nadine to foster the relationship with her newest fan, I told Wilson that Nadine had asked me NOT to help him build the Lego. I was sure that Nadine had told me she wanted him to save it for next week, when I will be at the hospital and she will be back home with us looking for things to do.... I think there is a special place in heaven for Lego builders... To close the deal all I need to do now is let Nadine know that Wilson didn't want my building help, he wanted to wait for her to come back!