NOTE: This post was written in January ’23
I finally got to meet my niece Hanna for the first time recently. Though she was very uncertain of me at first, I’m sure we’ll become besties as time goes on. She’s 3 and will have you wrapped around her finger in no time.
It might however be a slightly tougher bonding experience for my youngest son Matthew, 7. You see, he and his 2 brothers are “unnaturally competitive” when it comes to LEGO creations. So much so, we’ve designated 3 shelves as their individual display shelves, and they place all of their LEGO-created castles, rockets, cars, dragons and boats on their shelf for all to admire. When they get home from school, the usual chain of events is to dump all of their backpacks, boots, coats, hats and gloves in an unkempt pile inside the front door, then get a snack and go to your shelf to make sure your LEGO creations didn’t sprout legs and wander off. Or to ensure your brothers didn’t steal pieces, or to blame the cat on a broken display item… whatever.
Well, when you inject a 3 year old into the equation, all habits and itineraries go out the door. Once Hanna found out where the LEGOS were, she was gone, with Matthew not far behind, kind of tailing her like an undercover cop or something. And as my brother, her dad, so eloquently put it, “she’s not good at building, but REALLY good at taking apart.
Uh-oh.
So Matthew had to sit there and watch while his prized rocketship got torn to pieces by Toddlerzilla. I assured him we would build it again, but that didn’t seem to help. She continued to rip LEGOS apart and send them flying, while little blue-eyed Matthew, bottom lip quivering, watched in agony.
“Please don’t…SMASH”… “But that’s my”… CRUNCH… “It took me all day to make that pla…” CRASH
My solution? Throw out some distracting words and see which one worked. PIZZA, NERF GUN, CARTOONS.. nothing was working. Then I found it.. ICE CREAM. Apparently at that moment that was the only thing that trumped LEGOS.
We’ll rebuild once Toddlerzilla descends back into the murky depths.