More Legos

This isn't an epiphany to anyone who knows Dalton, but it was obvious this weekend that he hasn't avoided the "Industrial Movie Character Complex". We've been building a Lego fire truck that I received for Christmas this weekend. I've been holding off getting it out in hopes that the "sensitive period" for Legos would end and be replaced with a "sensitive period" for reading. In the meantime, Dalton has been pointing at previous sets we have put together and started asking if we could take them apart and put them back together. I had been thinking about this and decided that the whole philosophy behind sensitive periods is you go with them rather than try to change them to preferred topics. Besides, if he ends up an engineer instead of a writer, I’m not going to complain.

Having made up my mind to get out the fire truck this weekend, I was surprised to find Cathy and Dalton playing with it when we got up. We were working on it yesterday when an interesting conversation took place.

Dalton: Why did Bana and Papa buy you this fire truck?

Me: I asked them for it because I thought it would be fun to put it together with you.

Dalton: Why do you ask for presents?

Me: Well, people who want to buy you presents like to know what you want so they buy something you like.

PAUSE

Dalton: I want the Lego set with Woody and Jessie for Christmas.

This would be the first time he’s asked for a specific gift for a holiday. It took a few questions to figure out what he was talking about. The Toy Story Lego set he’s asking for is one that we saw with him in Walmart.

That was an interesting experience.

He was running out of Legos so we stopped off at Walmart on the way home to pick up a Creator set for him. We had our eye on two of the small ones. He immediately ran over to the Toy Story set. After some intense negotiation, we talked him into two of the small Creator sets.

Wait a minute, we won. How did that happen?