legos

Sunday late morning Theo was looking for a buddy to hang out with and he chose me. It was all about convenience, not actual preference. But the request came in for me to do something with Theo, and since I hardly ever get asked anymore (just earlier that weekend after I saw them for the first time after they returned from a sleep over and I got home from the school fair, Theo kindly asked me to leave him alone and Eli silently closed his door on me) I accepted, despite the fact that the activity being offered was...legos. Like I have said before, I love legos if there are diagrammed directions and sets that include only the pieces needed to build the things in the diagrams. But Theo escorted me into his room and there on the floor was the old Lego bag with the legos covering about 16 square feet of floor space. No plans. Just time to play. But then, a ray of hope! Theo mentioned that it would be nice to separate some of the legos into the new lego bag Grandma Sherry had made him for christmas (she was making her statement about how heavy the one bag was and how much she disliked hoisting it back up onto its hook in the closet). Seperate! Sort! What warms my heart more than a good sorting project? So I eagerly sat down and began trying to sort them into the categories picked by Theo- legos, and legos used for bionicles. But to do so, I needed much clarification as to what was bionical-esque. After Eli (who had actually put down his book to join us) heard me ask for the 1245 time, "is this for bionicles?" he had a better idea. He figured I could possibly identify by myself which pieces were people pieces- they were either heads, or bodies, or legs- and I could concentrate on those. I spent the next hour blissfully hunting down all body parts in that damn bag. And I found them. No severed hand was too little for my discerning eye. Soon it turned into quite a fancy sorting operation, with containers for hats and hair, weaponry, and yes, even severed hands. It became quite the hunt, with much cheering and hulabaloo anytime a particularly rare piece was found. "McGonagal's hat!!!" "Chewbaca's legs!!" "Dumbledore's beard!!" "A severed hand!!" And I managed to get become familiar enough with the properties that make a lego a bionicle to get those all stashed in bag number two. Our legos are now so nicely organized that I think the kids are scared to play with them. I know that within the month they will be one gigantic mash again, but I don't care. Then when Theo asks me to play with them again, I can get another good sorting fix. Love sorting. Really. This has given me a whole new attitude toward legos.