Architectural Frustrations

I picked up a little box with a lid at the thrift store to find that it was full of the chunky type legos that they start every childhood lego addiction with. It was 1.99, I think, and Rugrat seemed very interested in it so I brought it on home.

At first, she glanced over the blocks inside, oohing and aahing over the colors. Then she was done. They didn't seem to interest her even when I showed her how they fit together. So I thought they were destined to be a visitor child's toy of choice.

But then, for whatever reason, the other day she started stacking them. There was a little flat piece and that was where her interest lay at first. Stacking as many of the smaller pieces as would fit onto that flat piece and moving them around so that different colors and shapes were in different places.

Then she graduated to 'staircases.'

She has proudly been creating 'staircases' as much as possible. Over and over again.

Unfortunately, she's had some frustrations with her legos.

It probably didn't help that she was still tired from our trip last weekend. She would get annoyed that she couldn't get them stacked tightly enough. Or that the rounded off pieces weren't as stable as the others.

Since her initial tantrums coming home, we haven't really seen her get too upset. And usually it is of the weeping, pitiful type. She doesn't usually get mad. But this began with teeth gritting and tears, There was some stamping of feet and growling. She has even lain down on the floor and had some writhing with tears.

It's difficult not to grin a little when she's getting so frustrated. The sight of such a tiny little girl throwing her hand on her hip and stomping her foot is hard to take serious.

Most of the time we remind her to put it down for now and then play with it in a little while -- once she's not so frustrated. Or if she is getting too upset (and it's close to bath/bedtime), we'll have her pack them up to put away until tomorrow.

For the most part though she seems to be really enjoying the legos. She is constantly wanting to play with them and putting them in different configurations. None of them stay the same way for long. And there are just enough colors in my little mishmash box to keep her happy.

And since Lego just wised up and has started making kits especially designed to appeal to girls (the dollhouse kit is really cool in my opinion), I think I may be seeing some Legos in our future.