My own little piece of crazy

It all started when I thought the Mormon obsession with sex couldn't get any creepier. We saw Meridian Magazine advising prospective FiLs to grill their prospective SiLs about porn consumption. Not as a joke. And don't forget the Children's Friend teaching girls they need to cover their shoulders to be "modest." At the age of four. That was closely followed by this kids-n-sex gem in which naked Barbies are "a poison worse than the black plague of death itself" for boys in second grade.

As a mom of two little boys, I have to admit I find it a little disturbing to start the sex-shaming so young (or at all, really). But the other disturbing part was how the article hit on my own little piece of crazy, with this throwaway line that that mom tossed in for comic relief:

and there are LEGO pieces we've resigned we'll never find

Blasphemy!!! What kind of mom would say something like that?! lol


a portion of our Lego collection

Everybody knows that a good mom is supposed to regularly gather up every single Lego piece in the whole apartment and obsessive-compulsively sort them into seventy categories, each in its own separate bin.

I'm kidding. Naturally, I recognize that this behavior is a little bit nuts, and I wouldn't expect any other parent to do it. Yet, there is a method to my madness. Allow me to explain:

First off, sorting the Legos is a Zen kind of task -- a nice break from my day job (which requires a non-trivial amount of concentration). Secondly (and probably most importantly), it's so much easier to build things out of them if you know what pieces you have and can find them all. And I like playing with them too!!

I get so sick of the kids asking for new toys all the time -- when they have plenty of perfectly good toys they're not playing with. Whenever the Lego collection is sorted anew, it's like getting a new toy -- the kids make some really imaginative stuff out of them! Plus they have fun playing with the stuff they build.


Can the Hero Factory escape from the kitchen where the villains trapped them?

The disadvantage is that my kids are always asking me to find this or that piece for them. The advantage is that I actually know where the pieces are. And most of the time they can find them -- and sometimes even sort them -- for themselves! :D