Legos, the new obsession!

Ok, I know I wrote a post back in December about how Andrew was obsessed with firetrucks, and it seems silly to write another obsessed post within a year. But y'all... he is for real, completely obsessed with Legos! The firetruck obsession has faded slightly, and Legos has grown into something WAY bigger! I guess it started around his birthday. I know that they have some Legos at his school that he played with occasionally, so I mentioned to people attending his party that he might like some Legos for his birthday. Well, he was gifted an awesome Lego table from Jenifer, and a couple sets of Legos. He was definitely interested in them around his birthday, but I guess we just didn't have that much time for him to play and explore. Fast forward to summer, and he became very interested in the Legos. I definitely wanted to encourage him, because I know Legos can help with creativity, math/engineering, and and fine motor skills. So I bought him a bucket of just assorted pieces - just a big set with lots of basic pieces for building. And the obsession grew! Then, Gran Gran and Grandpa Ray were unpacking things from their garage and found 3 giant tubs of Legos that they had saved from when the boys were little. I guess having 3 boys will get you a lot of Legos! Well, ever since then he has been all about the Legos. He wants to go over to their house constantly to build, and they have been so nice to allow him to take multiple (hundreds?) of pieces home. He constantly has a few different machines (and they are always called firetrucks or rockets to him!) and is always asking us to build with him. He is very particular about how things are built, and he often wants to do things himself. I think he really just wants company while he builds! Here are a few of his latest creations...

A firetruck, of course

A rocket

Another rocket

A motorcycle?

While I really love the Lego hobby (I have fun with them, too!), it's gotten to the point where he doesn't want to do anything else! We leave the gate open in the morning, and when he wakes up he just goes upstairs to build. I'm pretty sure he'd stay up there all day if we let him. He told me he just wanted to play Legos all day! He also isn't the best at picking up the Legos, and our upstairs looks like a Lego factory exploded. 

There's always a few of these guys laying around... we've inherited space men, Medieval horsemen, firefighters, police officers, boat workers, etc. from the Riley boys' collections!

Oh, hi!

Don't walk barefoot up here!

The Riley boys apparently had a whole dock set, and Andrew loves playing with the fireboats! 

It looks like the carnage after a battle... there's horses down, headless men, a cannon... I'm pretty sure Lego World War 3 was happening in our playroom!

Oh, look, another firetruck!

As I said, I really enjoy the Legos, and I'm glad that he has gotten into them. I love that this is a hobby that he can grow into as he gets older. We also have stumbled upon these YouTube videos made by a website called MadAboutLego.com. They have these short movies showing different Lego sets being built and then brought to life. We watch them about 4,000 times a day! At the end of each video it tells the price and how many pieces are included.... so he decides that he wants it, and I can see that it costs $100, and will add 563 Legos to our collection! Yikes! He's already excited about getting the Lego Oshkosh Striker for Christmas from Santa. Today he told me he wanted to skip Halloween and go straight to Christmas! Oh, Andrew!!

I've gotten really excited about his Lego obsession and started looking up Lego Land because I was curious. Andrew saw me looking and is also now set on going on vacation to Lego Land (they have a Lego Hotel!!). He saw it and said, "You need to call Daddy and tell him about this right now!" Haha! We told him that we would love to go to Lego Land in a few years, but we needed to save our money for the trip because it was very expensive. I explained what saving money meant, and he sweetly offered up all the coins in his shark "piggy" bank to help pay for the trip. I sure love my sweet boy! 

Some building from today... Inheriting Legos leads to very diverse passengers and crew on a boat!

And who's that driving? Oh, hi Peter Pan!