Saturday, November 13, 2010

My Love Hate Relationship With Legos

I loved Legos as a kid. I had one of those plastic file folder tote thingies full of Legos. (side note, why is thingies not underlined as a misspelled word?) Anywhoodle, I had a lot of them. I guess I still do, they are just at my parents. When my nephew started playing Legos, I was thrilled. It had been years since I had built something and it was a blast to play with them again.

I hate Legos.

Cole found Pat's popcorn tin full of Legos this summer. I despise Legos. They are everywhere. They are supposed to be kept downstairs in the playroom, but always end up upstairs in the carpet.

Boy Legos are vastly different than girl Legos. My Lego collection consists of lots of building blocks and people and accessories. Pat's Lego collection consists of Technic pieces to build robots and machinery and stuff I don't know how to build because they need some specialized little piece that is buried in my carpet.

I am glad that Cole is taking an interest in Legos. Today I took him to Target to spend his $11 and he picked out a Lego firetruck. That's a much better investment than something that will end up broken in 5 minutes. I just wish I had the patience for him that I had for my nephew. It's so much easier to just build it myself than have him help. I know that's something I really need to work on.

On that note, I used to babysit a lot. I babysat for one particular family, and the kids loved me. All I did was go over there and play with them. We'd play games, play in the yard, we just did stuff. I remember we'd race around the house. Their oldest boy was convinced he could beat me, so we'd race. The youngest was about 2 at the time, and he'd try his hardest to keep up and he'd run all the way around that house no matter how far behind he was. He went to state track in the high jump last year.

Anyway, I was a good babysitter because I'd play with them. We didn't just sit in front of the TV. We followed the rules about eating and bed time, but we had plenty of fun. When you become a parent, it's not so easy. If I am home I feel like there are a million other things I should be doing and the phrase "just a minute" gets used way too often. I'm horrible with time management, especially with 2 kids. They can just play with each other right?

There is a stereotype with stay-at-home moms. We stay at home and spend all this time with our children, but in reality, I feel like I spend very little time truly with them. I spend my mornings catching up on school work and house work, Tate naps in the afternoon, then it's chores, supper, and bed time. It leaves very little time for play. Everyone always tells you to enjoy them when they are little because they grow up so fast, but you can't ever appreciate it until one day you wake up and you are putting your baby on a big yellow school bus. You wonder "when did this happen?" and you truly don't know.

This really was not what I intended in writing this post. It was supposed to just be a light-hearted post on Legos. Maybe writing this will help me be more aware of how I spend my time and give me the motivation to be a little more patient and maybe, just maybe I'll find some time to just play Legos.

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