April 3, 2005 - Sunday
With all the boys' Bionicle stuff and now their knowledge of Star Wars, we've been thinking lately that the boys needed some new, less violence-oriented, building kinds of toys. So we picked up a box of Magnetix today when we were at the Target. I've seen several kids at school with these, including both Rip and Connor, and they seem like wholesome, fun building toys. Because they were for both Harry and Jeremy I figured I'd better start with the box with the most pieces (70). When we opened it in the car on the way home (since they're magnets and less likely to fall about in between the seats, we didn't see a great problem with letting the boys play with them in the car), we learned that 70 actually meant only 28 steel balls (for the joints) and 42 megnetic rods to connect them and we found out pretty quickly that 70 pieces would probably not be enough. The trouble was that the boys were both grabbing pieces from the one box as fast as they could and Harry's extra two-years worth of agility made him the faster builder. He snatched up more than Jeremy and not surprisingly, and in typical sibling fashion, Jeremy got mad about it. It was all pretty normal stuff and I promised the boys that if they liked them and kept playing with them that we'd go back and get more.

The funny part in all this was how Jeremy expressed his frustration with a turn of phrase and attitude that belied his years. At first he was mad; typical three-year-old mad. We tried reasoning with him by telling him he was doing a great job with the pieces he had, that he and Harry could take turns, and that we'd get more Magnetix: all the usual parent slop. And for an instant it seemed to work. Jeremy attitude seemed to turn gentle and he asked in an innocent voice, "is this cool?" refering to the little cluster he had put together.
But it was a facade. Just as his mother and I both started to "oh, yes, Jeremy, it is cool " and spew out the positives, Jeremy put the hammer down and cut us off with "no! it's not cool!" packed with all the spit and vinegar of a little three-year-old artistic temperament (except he can't pronounced "c," so it came out as "it's not tool"). I don't actually know whether this little repartee was really as much a set-up on his part as it seemed, but it sure would have been a great moment for the camcorder.


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