Ian Goes Retro

In the last several weeks in which we've had few blog posts, Ian has developed some new interests. One is the strong and insistent desire to go "outside" and "play!" with "rocks!" all the time. More on that later. Another interest is Legos. After watching him play with some of our old toys in Syracuse, I realized that he was old enough for some pretend play (to my surprise, I thought this would take a while yet). After researching the options for sets of toys with people, we decided that Legos are by far the best -- lots of variety, well designed, and durable. So we've invested in some Duplo sets. Ian now has lots of Duplo vehicles, people, and a fire station, and these seem to be his favorite toys at the moment. Hearing this, Grammie and Pa promptly sent Doug's old Duplo blocks. This is great, because we like to reuse toys, and because Ian has very few Lego blocks in the sets he has. The Duplos arrived today, and Ian had fun exploring the retro legos -- this set includes blocks, people, and animals, which is a good complement to his array of trucks. Retro Legos are funny, injection molded plastic has definitely come a long way in the last 30 years!

Here he is checking out these strange new Legos:


And discovering that the same principles apply -- stuff attaches to other stuff:

(The dogs were also extremely interested in these Legos -- Zrbrt almost succeeded in pulling the bin out with her paw to check them out -- suggesting that Doug's childhood dog Ginger may have spent some time curled up with these Duplos).

In other recent developments, Uncle Greg (now dubbed "Geggy!"), has returned to Durham for his next building project. We went to the train station on Friday to watch him arrive, a fun real-life train event that Ian still talks about. Greg's arrival is great for several reasons, but Lilo appreciates him in part because she loves his sleeping bag. This is how we found her the other day: