Legos

I've heard that all parents are faced at one time or another with a very important decision. The decision between Legos and Playmobil. My understanding is that everyone has to plant themselves firmly in one camp or the other by the time their first born is five. For the past couple of years we've given Playmobil a try, and I find myself really liking the pieces—they're well made and almost realistic—but I also find them constraining in a way that Legos would never be. So we're putting one foot firmly in each camp.

And that's not really what this post is about. Calvin got his first Lego set, an electric truck, for St. Nicholas Day this year and it took him less than half an hour to assemble it by himself. I found great joy in watching him decipher the picture directions, making errors here and there then fixing them, asking for help only a handful of times when he couldn't get a piece to snap down. It was a great moment, and that's what this post is about.