We’re on a monster movie kick and I find my younger son’s battle between giant, legged shark and croc creatures more engaging than Godzilla and King Kong’s latest bout.
31 Days of Lego: Rage in Monster City
31 Days of Lego: The Reading Room
I’ve gotten a couple days behind on our Delaware Fun-A-Day project and spent most of today on this quiet space for learning and creating.
31 Days of Lego: Baby, You’re the Tops
I went a little more wild and fun with this spinning top.
31 Days of Lego: The Female of the Species
Larger and less ornate than Mega Magic Turt, this companion piece makes me wonder how many variations of these creatures could exist.
31 Days of Lego: Pet Adoption
One of our most frequent Lego club attendees loves to create sprawling indoor and outdoor environments. She graciously accepted the physical boundaries of our Delaware Fun-A-Day project and built this adoption agency full of animals waiting for a home.
31 Days of Lego: Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble
My older son is working behind the scenes in Pages Alive Theater‘s production of Much Ado About Nothing. He has a natural talent for comedy, but I can tell he is craving another go at tragedy.
His first speaking part was as a messenger in Macbeth and the Scottish play has been on his mind as he thinks more about theater.
Here he recreates the opening scene with automatons as witches in opposition to the martial dress of Macbeth and Banquo.
Alternate visions and interpretations are always encouraged in our learning lifestyle and Manga Shakespeare: Macbeth served as an inspiration for this build.
31 Days of Lego: Underwater Kingdom
31 Days of Lego: Mega Magic Turt
Play. Play with colors. Play with shapes.
I thought I was building an abstract mosaic, toying with angles and curves and trying to make them work together.
It began to come alive, meant for more than a stationary life.
The curves and angles started to make more sense. Shapes and colors became more complementary.
This one was a lot of fun and I imagine it will get a companion.
31 Days of Lego: Mars Needs Milk
Our learning lifestyle found a fun sync when my younger son’s Fun-A-Day build matched with a Bitsbox project.
After completing this alien abduction scene, he started on a new coding program and one of the games he had to create was called Mars Needs Milk.
I love that learning has no boundaries, bells, time limits, or compartmentalized subjects here. We learn in every season and in everything we do.
31 Days of Lego: Spaceship Therapy
I’m a sap. We saw Thor: Love and Thunder today and I cried…a lot.
Somewhat necessarily, Marvel is killing off more and more of their earliest on-screen heroes and the survivors are dealing with grief. Avengers: Endgame and WandaVision used grief as a central motivation for key characters and the latest Thor installment carries on Marvel’s skillful handling of this emotion.
By “skillful,” I mean “fucking triggering.” The Marvel Cinematic Universe(MCU) was born in 2008. Mary and I were newlyweds a year out from becoming parents. I wasn’t a huge Iron Man fan as a kid, but we both loved movies and it looked like there would finally be a great super hero movie that wasn’t another Spider-Man (okay, we liked the X-Men flicks too).
Not long after, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor hit the big screen and Mary found her favorite super hero. We had two babies by then and had to wait for the DVD release. Date nights were rare and we watched most of the MCU from our couch.
Eleven years later and Thor is in the theaters again. Our sons are huge fans and my girlfriend joined us for a matinee.
I won’t spoil anything, but there was a lot of loss throughout the film. This fictional world still has a strong connection to Mary and my fears regarding death.
My body didn’t feel right after an active weekend and my head was swirling with a resurrected grief. I was drained and not ready to create, or do anything, for that matter.
I pushed myself to the Lego table to try to focus on something simple. Lego is the oldest therapy I know and just the sound of pieces being moved around takes me back to a carefree time.
Spaceships are a comfort build as all my sets as a kid were space themed. They are also a mental torture as so many have been made by Lego, fans, and myself.
The balance of challenge and familiarity worked. I put my hands to use and found calm in creating.
