Lego turns five tomorrow. Even though this blog is virtually dead because I seem to lack things to talk about that I feel I can post in a public place anymore (life is full of uncertainties and hypotheticals that are occupying my mind right now), I wanted to keep a record of what he’s doing at this stage of his life and what his personality is like.
And boy, does he have personality to spare! Lego knows exactly who he is and what he likes and doesn’t like, and he’s not afraid to let you know it. His favorite things are Legos, robots, superheroes, and, at Halloween, bats.
He’s definitely an outside-the-box thinker: rather than playing any one superhero, he often will combine outfits to create his own to pretend to be. Duplo often gets stuck being the bad guy. And Lego builds really strange-looking flying car/house things and can tell you all the mechanics of how they blast off, land, move, etc. I don’t know where the bat obsession came from, but at Halloween at least 75% of the pictures he drew were of bats, and he would hang them up all over our house, including from the ceiling above his bed.
As for robots, when he’s not building his flying car houses out of Legos, he’s building robots. Or sometimes robots whose pieces can be rearranged so that they “transform” into flying car houses. He has a Transformer, but he doesn’t know how to transform it himself, so I guess this is the next best thing.
He’s also having his very first birthday party tomorrow and inviting eleven friends, plus Duplo. The theme is robots. We created a robot out of cardboard boxes and aluminum foil to use as a decoration, and each kid will be able to make a soda-can robot at the party to take home. I’ll take pictures tomorrow and post them if I remember. I’m also going to attempt a robot cake, and we’re going to play Robot Says and a beanbag game that I’ll tie into robots somehow. I hope the one girl Lego invited to the party won’t be overwhelmed by the masculinity.
Developmentally, Lego is following his usual pattern of being way ahead mentally and a little behind physically. He is reading, which is the most exciting thing he’s doing right now. I’m not really overstating this: he knows all the consonant combinations, including ch, sh, gh, and so forth, he knows about silent e and gets words using it right most of the time, and he can recognize common words such as “come” by sight. His biggest roadblock right now is just attention span; he doesn’t like to read for very long, but when he sits down and does it, he gets at least 85% of the words right. We are so proud of him and in awe of the process in general.
He’s also really into math. He taught himself to count to 100, and he’s learning to add and subtract single-digit numbers. Several times a day he’ll ask us, “What’s four plus three?” or “What’s seven minus one?” And if we tell him to try to figure it out, he usually can.
The other day he asked me, out of the blue, what 100 8’s was, or 8 + 8 + 8 + 8, 100 times. When I told him it was 800, his eyes got wide, and he said, “WOW!” I told him that kind of math was called multiplication, and he said “WOW!” again. I think we’re raising a little nerd here. 🙂
He still can’t catch a ball all that well, but we’re working on it. He’s been trying to figure out how to throw a frisbee straight and getting a bit better at that. He has no interest really in learning how to tie his shoes. Is this still something kindergartners are supposed to learn? Almost all his shoes use velcro, so I can see why he’s less than motivated.
He’s got a good little singing voice that’s more or less on pitch all the time. He’s learning to tell stories that make sense as such, and he loves telling jokes. He still likes attention from his parents and has a hard time playing alone. I suspect he’ll be like that for a long time. He loves to teach Duplo things and to organize play involving Duplo, and for the most part, Duplo loves to be told what to do.
Most of all, perhaps, Lego loves being outdoors. Some things never change. I hope the wintry weather does soon, though.
Happy birthday, little buddy! It’s been a great five years with you.
I’m turning 30 this year and I can barely catch a ball and definitely cannot throw or catch a frisbee. Hopefully I turned out ok. I’d say stay with the nerdy (and very impressive) stuff.
I love the posts you do on your boys’ birthdays. It is so fun to read about their personalities, accomplishments, likes, and dislikes.