Lego Mania!

Oh my god. I wish I liked to play chess. Witness! The Lego Chess set. Wow. Look at the cute little dwarves, wizards, and skeletons!

I think it’s really interesting what Lego has become. So many of the miniatures are so beautiful and clever now, like the Viking sets or Harry Potter. They look like so much fun. And since I engage in a surprising amount of playing when no one is watching, I can totally appreciate them. I do hope the original building sets are available. We had so much fun with those.

We had the standard pack with 200 or so pieces. All three kids played with it so a considerable amount of pieces were forever lost in the shaggy rya rug in the dining room. Nothing hurts so much as stepping on one of those single peg pieces in your bare feet.

I think there were some illustrations on the box of what you could make, but don’t recall ever following them. I made a lot of houses, gardens, cars, and crates for small plastic animals. I do recall we had only two axles and four wheels of varying sizes, so one’s motorcraft was somewhat unraceable. We had a marvelous time with them.

One sore spot was the lack of female lego figures, however. I am glad they remedied that because I distinctly recall arguing with a boy in kindergarten that because my lego guy was a girl, she needed to have the the little red hard hat to tuck her hair under. Bowed over by this impeccable logic, he gave in and presented me with the helmet.

Legos are made in Denmark, I believe, and one of the big adventures most Scandinavian families have is a trip to Legoland in Jutland. They have various play areas and huge sculptures made entirely of legos. Interestingly, one is about to open in Schaumburg near the Ikea. I keep telling Knut that Scandinavia is coming to him!