More adventures in lego

Having become engrossed in building creatures from his own imagination, LittleBear seemed to suddenly take note of the little helicopter than BigBear had built. Which then reminded him that he did in fact own some more specialised lego. Including a helicopter. Now, we have built the helicopter before, but for some time, all the pieces have been repurposed towards making mythical monsters, improbable dinosaurs and startling sharks.

Today, LittleBear decided the time had come to build all of his Lego Arctic Explorer kits. Some were already complete, but he set to work, frequently unassisted as I cooked, cleaned etc, and we spent the whole day building lego. And this is what we ended up with:

Lego Arctic Explorers

As I said, some of it was already built, but I'm quite proud of the fact that we assembled these pieces today:

Today's efforts

Aside from the very large helicopter, which required a bit of assistance, LittleBear basically built everything himself. And the snowplough he built by following the instruction booklet without my help. I was busy making macaroni cheese and came back to find he'd made most of it already. I am ridiculously proud of by LittleBear for this*.

Obviously, once we'd built it all, we then had to construct the Arctic so that we could race our machines across the ice, catch fish (yes, there are little lego fish), and try and escape from polar bears. I'd been slightly dreading today, having had three bad night's sleep in a row, and having cancelled our plans for today after the other half of our plan developed chickenpox. I thought being at home with no plan might drive me up the wall. But actually, it was a delightful day, with LittleBear showing depths of concentration and focus that I didn't know he had in him. There are times when he seems to have the attention span of a flea, and yet today, he was totally engrossed. Just thinking about it makes me smile...



* Bitter Parenting Aside
I'm sure there are other people whose children build far more advanced lego models without parental help and who will be secretly looking down on me for being proud. I'm equally sure there are other people who will think I'm some kind of deranged parent to give my four year old such advanced lego. Because if there's one thing I know about parenting, it's that wherever you lie on any spectrum, there are people further in each direction who judge your actions and either privately (or tediously publicly) make their disapproval or superiority known. So, just in case any of you feel like passing judgement, don't. I do what I do with LittleBear, and we both seem to be pretty happy about it, and as far as I'm concerned, that's all that counts. No, I don't know why I'm being so pissy about this. I blame lack of sleep.