Matthew & his Lego

This was the set that started it all. We got it for him when he was about 3.5 years old.

Sure, he was exposed to the Mega Blocks and Lego Duplo when he was younger, but this one was different. This was his first set that came with instructions on how to build the structures. And he was hooked.

He would sit there, patiently turn the instruction booklet page by page and build these structures. He would take them apart and build them over and again. All by himself, with an occasional look at me for approval that he was doing it right. I later learnt that his ability is a feat because he was only 3.5 and sets like these were meant for children 7-12.

I didn't think much about what he was doing, and since he liked it, we fed him set after set. Much better than action figurines.

Then one day, we lost a couple of these little bricks.

Now, if you have dealt this these lego sets, you would think people working in Lego are mad. Their attention to detail is amazingly terrifying if you asked me. For eg., they have these little lights that are 0.5cm, and you painstakingly build them but in the end, it might not even be visible because it is inside the structure.

When my little boy came to me upset that he couldn't find a 1cm blue rectangle or a 0.5cm round red brick, it first annoyed me because he bugged me endlessly to help him find it. Then, it got me really worried. Really really worried.

Because not only was he upset that the bricks were missing, but he had memorized where these bricks were meant to be! He did not need to consult the instruction booklet to know that the piece was indeed to be there. I will come back to this issue in another blog, but for now, this is Matt's love in the toy department.

Legos. Lego City and Lego Creator in particular.

He has 9-1o sets thanks to his birthday and Christmas gifts, with the fire engine being his ultimate favourite. We contributed 3 sets in our moments of parental weakness of wanting to witness the ecstatic look on his face receiving them. Very skewed vehicles collection at the moment, because the sets on city buidlings are mightily pricey. But I am sure he will get there.

Some of his lego vehicles