In a long-ago post, I railed against toys comprised of a million little pieces. I later compared Lego sets to a virulent strain of Ebola.
None of that has changed, and in fact, it's only gotten worse. Paige loves Legos, no doubt, and all the adults in her life know it. So when it comes time for toy-giving (which in my mother's case is unfortunately every single time she lays eyes on my children), there's always a Lego set in the offing.
Some of these have been assembled in full and taken apart again, but most have been half-baked according to the instructions and then combined together in an enormous, colorful pile of tiny plastic pieces housed in a single Rubbermaid Action Packer tote. More often than not, that tote is dumped out onto the floor, where its contents blanket several square feet of floor space. It looks like this:
Grandma and Grandpa just arrived for a visit (the ones that care about the house being clean--not the ones who are trying to drown me in plastic), so it was time to clean up. But first, a hot shower followed by a Jameson on the rocks (also good prep for parental visitation). For only with the help of Jameson Irish Whiskey is cleanup of Lego-related squalor remotely tolerable. The problem though is that a buzz tends to undermine one's efficiency, and so it was that the kids and I began playing with the Legos we were supposed to be cleaning up.
Por ejemplo, I made it my business to find each single-dot Lego piece, which I have dubbed "the onesie." I enlisted Isaac's help in digging around in the pile for every single onesie and linking them together into a single tower, like this. I was VERY proud of myself!
When I was done with that, I insisted that we find all of the "flat onesies" and stick them onto a "board." (Again, these are my own concocted names for these pieces, and have not been officially endorsed by Lego, Inc.). That project came out looking like this: (Note some of them are tiny little cookies and nickels! So satisfying)!
While Isaac and I were occupied finding "onesies" and "flat onesies," Paige was making a swimming pool out of an upside down mini-umbrella, and insisted I take a picture of the girl with a "torch-flame onesie" for hair bathing in it:
When all was said and done, we ended up with a bigger mess than we started with. But all of the carpet in our house is intentionally patterned after dirt and Lego pieces, with the intent that it absorb both. So I'm OK with it.
