I have a confession to make.  I am obsessed (and possibly slightly addicted) to Legos.  I know.  I’m a grown woman, responsible for the care of another human being.  And the other night, I spent more than an hour searching Amazon for that perfect set of Legos to satisfy the addiction.  I ended up buying the “Lego Elves Nadia’s Epic Adventure Ship.”  Why is this perfect?  It is a nice balance between a complicated adventure building activity, feminist liberation, and an awesome ship that Noah loves to play with so I can pass it off as a toy for him.  Parenting Win!

I am blaming this entire thing on my mother (Yeah, mom.  You heard me.)  As a kid, I was not allowed to have Legos.  I think her reasoning (or so she claims) is that she didn’t trust me not to leave them on the floor and she didn’t want to step on them.  While yes, I probably would have left them all over the floor. That is no excuse.

So, fast forward almost 30 years.  Noah recently turned 4 and our friends gave him a set of Legos for his birthday.  He and I sat down together and built the little construction rig and car.  It even had a working wrecking ball!

Something lit up inside me.  And, I guess it was cool that Noah enjoyed playing with them too.  I was actually excited to take him to Target to pick out more.  I was a little bummed to discover that, even when you just buy the box of “plain” Legos, they give you instructions on what you can make.

But, obviously, I went ahead and made the prescribed plane or lighthouse, handed it over to Noah so he could play with it, wait for him to eventually break it, and then make something new.  Legos are like a puzzle that you can do over and over but never the same way.  I’m getting excited just thinking about it!

I do have to deal with Noah wanting to use the exact piece that I need to finish my tower.  Last night, I actually said, “Sorry buddy, but you’re going to have to stop playing with that piece because I need it for the tower I’m building.”  Not my proudest moment.

I did discover that Lego people are not exactly what I expected them to be.  For all of the sets that I had and the ones that I purchased (and it was quite a few), there were only 3 Lego construction people.  As I began building castles, Noah quickly claimed them as the King (the one with the beard), the Guard (the other one with the beard), and the Queen (the one without the beard).

So, being the addict that I am, I got on Amazon and ordered directly from China, a whole bag of 20 Lego people.  It took forever for them to come and, when they finally arrived, I opened all 20 of these tiny little bags only to find 20 male Lego people.  All kinds of male Lego people, but all men.  We have pirates and soldiers, musketeers and chefs, artists and Robin Hood.  But no females. 

Obviously, my next goal was to find female Lego people.  But I was disappointed to discover that female Lego people are now part of this new “Lego Friends” world where that have giant heads and don’t look at all like the Lego men.  And the Lego Friends sets are hair salons and pool parties.  Seriously??

That’s when I went back to Amazon (thank goodness for Prime) and I found these Elves.  They are a little androgynous and go on awesome adventures.  They still don’t look like Lego men but, to be honest, Lego men are a little creepy anyways. And, I already ordered Lego superheroes from China.  I can’t wait for them to arrive!  I’ll be Wonder Woman!