Legos in the Attic

How cool it is to go on a trip for spring break and get to visit some grandparents? Pretty cool. How cool is it  to get to have a borderline epic playdate during this visit to said grandparents? Awesomely cool. That was today. Awesomely cool.

This morning Ben's dad delivered him unto Pap-Pap and Sandi's house for his playdate with his old pal, Kiernan. Ben is one of Sandi's former kindergarten students, one of a few kids Kiernan met and befriended when we visited last year and joined Sandi's class for an after school excursion to a strawberry farm. Kiernan remembered a couple of those kids, but he remembered Ben most vividly, because Ben was the one into Bionicles.

The things that bring us together.

The first thing that happened in today's playdate, once the boys were reintroduced and their respective Bionicles were acquainted with one another, was the unveiling of Super Terrific Upstairs Lego Adventureland. Okay, that's not really what they call it around here, but I'm calling it that because I'm writing this. If they want to correct me, they can leave a comment below. Go ahead. I dare you. HA!

Super Terrific Upstairs Lego Adventureland--just rolls off the tongue doesn't it--is a little space my dad built into the attic area of the house for my brother Mason, when Mason was a kid. It's a cozy little area with a light and a fan, and a skylight. It also has about a million Lego pieces in seven hundred or so bins. The picture at the top of this post shows present-day Mason in said space with his nephew later on during today's playdate. You see Kiernan? See the outline of a dark square behind him? That's the door to STULA.  Here's a shot of the little space from across the room and downstairs.

It's a pretty cool space, though somewhat tough to make out here. It exists over the kitchen (if you look down in the lower lefthand corner you can see the fridge door open) and can only be accessed by using the attic dropdown ladder in the hall. What you cannot see here is that Sandi and Dad have placed a tallish stepstool in the middle of the kitchen so that an adult could, by standing on the top step, peer into the space and watch the kids at work. That's one way I know it's a cool space.

Another way I know is from hearing about the exclamations of joy and incredulity that issued forth from Ben and Kiernan when Pap-Pap led them up there for the first time. Things like "This is the coolest place ever!" and "I want to live here forever!" were apparently said. I say "apparently" because I was sound asleep during the early hours of this playdate. I know what you're thinking. Lazy, right? In my defense I was up until about five in the morning recording a podcast. So I was out cold for a reason.

Okay. That was weak. Who am I kidding? I'd have been out no matter what. Sleeping in is one of the perks of visiting grandparents that you never think is going to be as valuable as people intimate it is. But it is. Oh yes...it is.

The important thing here is not my sleeping habits but the fact that I did indeed wake up in time to get a few pictures of the gang of two still enjoying Mason's Lego Attic Hideaway.  Later when I returned from a long walk I got the top picture of Mason enjoying it with them too. The neat thing about this later visit to the attic was how Kiernan reacted to it. When I got back from my walk I noticed him down on the floor in the living room, playing with some other Lego pieces with Sandi. I glanced up to the attic window opening over the kitchen and saw Ben up there and heard my brother's voice coming from up there too. I opened my mouth to ask what was up and noticed my son's brow was furrowed. Sandi smiled, her eyes wide. Just then Kiernan called out something about going down to the beach now, and I could tell implicit in his voice was a sense of "at long last!" I don't think there was a response from the attic. Kiernan's brow furrowed more deeply and he made a gesture of clear frustration.

I waited to see what would happen. These are the times that try a six-year old's soul. Especially his. He has trouble managing it sometimes during a playdate, or on the playground at school, when his friends don't want to play what he wants to play and just keep doing what they want to do. This can lead to meltdowns. Anger. Gnashing of teeth.

Not this time.

After a few moments he disappeared from the room and I heard him climbing up the stairs and making his way back up into the attic where he reintegrated himself into the Lego playing (as you can, again, see from the first picture). I was pretty proud of him. He'd had some time of sulking, a bit of impatience and frustration, but in the end he didn't take his ball and go home. He worked it out. I love seeing that.

And karma smiled upon him, for in short order the whole crew headed down to the beach.

When I got back from driving Mason to work, I found Kiernan down at the beach playing with Ben in the little stream that leads from the neighborhood pond down to the York River. They had built a dam and were busy sending meteors down from the heavens to the sand houses they had built in the shadow of said dam. I could paste a number of panels from the best comic of all time, Calvin & Hobbes, to illustrate my absolute joy at watching him play like this, but I think you get the idea. Imagination ruled the day.

Not long after this the warning was given that the playdate was about to draw to an end. Even with a generous extension allowed by Ben's father, one that took the playdate up to the dinner hour, the boys were still insistent that they had not had enough time to play this day. Hours playing with Legos, a break for lunch, followed by hours playing with sand was simply not enough. They had to return to the Super Terrific Upstairs Lego Adventureland for one more round of building! This had to be done! But no, Sandi and Pap-Pap held firm. There would be no time for another round. By the time we got back up to the house and hosed off both boys, Ben's dad would surely have arrived for pickup.

In a last ditch attempt to sway them, Ben decided to dance.

This dance went on for a long time. A long time. At times hilarious. At times touching. It expressed one child's struggle against a universe that is about to deny him play. Finally his companion had to run in and interrupt. Give it up dude. Play while you can.

Eventually the boys got back down to playing--this time trying to dig an extensive network of tunnels with Pap-Pap's help--for a few more minutes until Ben's dad, inevitably arrived. As he made his way down to us at the beach, word reached the boys. They reacted by greeting him with open arms and showers of gratitude.

You didn't believe that did you?