Citibloc Passion

Citiblocs have dominated the play table in the main floor family room for the past month. At first I and Matt built structures for the boys. Bentley picked structures out of the booklet that came with the blocks and supervised me while I built them. I wasn't given much leeway. One particularly difficult structure I had a hard time with and B told me to quit working on it. "Grandma, you can't do it. I don't want you to waste time on it." Well that just made me really want to build it, but it really was nearly impossible. I think they used glue.

Soon after I was fired by B and he took over building himself using his own designs or copying elements of his father's designs. Matt still got recruited by Jake to build a structure "just like Bentley's". Matt wouldn't follow Jake's instructions. He built one similar to, but not just like, Bentley's. Matt wanted some creative license. Jake got really mad and fired him. And then J refused to share any of the Citiblocs with his dad, so Matt couldn't build his own structures.

Sharing Citiblocs is a problem. We started with a box of 500 Citiblocs. That sounds like a lot, but they are quickly used up. Kara and I each bought another set of 200. The first set arrived and contained pretty pink, red, yellow, and orange planks as well as natural colored ones. We told the boys it was Viva's set. They shared six planks with her. SIX!

The third set arrived (dark blue, teal, green, olive and natural) and Viva did get her hands on a pile of them. She did not build anything with them. If she didn't have brothers building elaborate structures would she attempt a simple design of her own?


I tried instituting a new rule. Structures can only remain up for two days. The day you build them and the following day. Then they come down and new structures can be built by anyone--even the adults. Bentley immediately tried to outmaneuver me. "What if I add on to something? Can I keep it longer?"