in the land of legos #10yearsaparent

When I walk into my basement, which looks like an inner circle of Lego purgatory with half finished abandoned creations, overturned bins, loose pieces covering every inch of floor, I have the intense urge to brand the word sucker right across my forehead.

We have too many Legos.*

For five years, more than half their short lives, my kids have been asking for and receiving Legos for every birthday, Christmas and grandparent visit.

For five years, I have been buying storage bins, finding Legos in the dryer, creating sorting systems, humoring the Chima t-shirts I swore my kids would never wear, and embracing an overpriced interlocking block system as an integral part of our family. It has its own room in our house.

How did these tiny blocks worm their way into our life? Why have I enabled, indulged and encouraged this gross accumulation?

Well, Legos have been the toy that my kids consistently play with. There have been other things (Where are you now Beyblades?), but they always come back to Legos.

They are timeless and nostalgic which mysteriously makes them seem better than other toys. Your favorite character in the Lego Movie was the old astronaut. Don’t deny it.

Like Nutella, I think, if the Euros are doing it, how bad can it be? But with these little bricks, Lego has created a toy that infiltrates the minds of children unlike no other.

Long gone are the days of a bucket of bricks and a bubbling imagination. Now sets dominate Lego culture. Consider the Friends Heartlake Shopping Mall where Steph and Emma hold a fundraiser with catwalk and DJ to benefit animal rescue. Or Minecraft Legos which take the virtual world of computer blocks back into reality with physical blocks. If that isn’t a mind and wallet fuck, I’m not sure what is.

I told my kids, if they could build something using every Lego that we already owned, I would buy them any set that they wanted. Anything. They conceded their loss after three hours.

If they’re not tapping into their inner engineer, at least they can follow directions, right? The attention needed to assemble a set results in the most lovely quiet concentration. The bigger the set, the more peace you are buying. You can see how this cycle of addiction develops. Legos are the most expensive babysitter ever.

Will I be sad when they are gone? Absolutely.

I was happy to usher out Thomas the Train. See you later Fisher-Price. Moving on Melissa & Doug. So sad to see you go.

But saying goodbye to Legos will be the end of an era. It will be the last of toys for our family in a world that is quickly evolving into Under Armor and handheld devices.

Maybe this year I’ll really put my foot down. Enough is enough.

Or maybe I’ll hang out just a little bit longer in the land of Legos.

*I have been informed that the plural of Lego is Lego, but come on, that just sounds crazy.

#tenyearsaparent is a weekly blog series about what I’ve learned in my first ten years as a parent. Whether you’re a parent nodding in agreement or shaking your head with disgust or a non-parent using these posts as birth control (the surgeon general wants me to tell you that reading blog posts about parenting is not an effective form of birth control), I’ll be spilling the beans on what parenting is really all about.