Free Range Lincoln (Lego Post #114)

Lincoln is definitely the most indulged of the children. When Bentley was his age he was pretty indulged, too, but he didn't have the toy collection Lincoln does. He didn't have the freedom to roam as far because his home at 15 months was much smaller than this home and the adult-to-child ratio was not in his favor. Lincoln has 6000 square feet of home to roam and four siblings to create distractions leaving him unsupervised. Usually he's confined to the main floor, so he can't get into too much trouble, but this past week when Kara and I were working on home organization projects, there were times when the baby gates both going upstairs and downstairs were wide open to allow us to move items from one floor to another. Open gates gave Lincoln access to the entire house while we were focused on moving or taking care of Evan. Fortunately for us, he's a good toddler. He likes to investigate and makes a few messes, but he's of a tidy, organized nature so that limits his damage.

One afternoon Kara found him in the upstairs family room checking out the Lego storage cabinet with 40+ drawers. He only opened two of them and transferred some of the contents of one drawer into a second drawer. It was easy enough to unsort his transfers. He chose to put the translucent 1x1 tiles in with the translucent 1x1 rounds. They blend together rather well, but it only took me a few minutes to sort them back out. Fortunately he hadn't moved on to multiple drawers or pulled the cabinet over which would have been a big mess. Lincoln is very precise and methodical. I like that!

A couple of hours after I resorted the Legos Kara confessed that she had caught Lincoln playing in the Lego cabinet more than one time. She asked me if there were ever two types of Legos in one drawer. There are, but not usually and the types should be similar in some way. I went back upstairs to recheck all the drawers--I had only done a cursory check the first time--and I found two drawers that were mixed up. Clear 1x1s tiles had been added to the 1x1 slopes drawer. I'm not sure that was Lincoln. I think maybe someone was sloppy putting Legos away. The other drawer was definitely Lincoln's work. He had added two types of 1x1s to the nose cone drawer. It was a quick fix because there were only a few dozen nose cones to sort through, not hundreds of pieces like some other Lego drawers.

I looked around before I left and I found one other place Lincoln had been relocating Legos to. He had carefully placed six different types of small Legos in a pile in the interior of the Ninjago temple on the Lego table. At first glance I thought it was a treasure pile. I guess it was-- Lincoln's treasure pile.

He's a delightful toddler. I love him even when he messes with the Legos I have spent hours sorting and organizing.