Buttercup's Lego city

Buttercup likes to build with Legos sometimes, and she usually makes towers with her bricks, or she'll use her base plate to make a maze or a parking lot. 

The other day, however, she worked studiously to make this city (I helped with the flowers). It looks great! And even our resident Lego critic (her big brother) told her that she did a great job. :-)

Updates and some pictures

We have been very busy lately! Busy doing fun summer stuff, busy just hanging out, busy playing with friends, busy running errands, busy doing swim lessons and gymnastics, etc. Busy, busy, busy. 


Last week Oliver had a week of Lego Robotics camp. His complaints after the first day was that 1) he was bored, and 2) he had to build exactly what he was told to build. Ha ha. I talked to the teacher, and she said that most of the kids preferred the "free build" time (building whatever they wanted to from a big pile of Legos on the floor), so she gave them more time for that instead of having them finish up their projects. As far as Oliver being bored -- on the second day, the teacher split his group up so that he was only working with 1 other kid, and that kid was more than happy to let Oliver build all of the projects by himself. Oliver definitely wasn't bored after that, and his group was still usually the first one to finish!  :-)  The only day they didn't finish early was the last day, when the big project was a very complicated crane. He needed the assistant teacher to help him with that one. :-)  


Oliver is also making leaps and bounds with his reading these days. I counted up his sight words a couple of weeks ago, and he knows close to 200 words! And he picks up more every day. He's also able to use the combination of sight-reading and "sounding out" to read some pretty hard words! Of course Buttercup is interested in learning how to read now, too. ;-) 


Buttercup is kind of having a hard time adjusting to not being in school right now. She just craves routine and being around her peers! At the beginning of summer vacation, she would ask me every day if it was a school day, and then she would be sad for a while when I said no. :-(  Poor girl!  I filled up our calendar with playdates and trips to parks, pools, and splash pads to keep her occupied, but now it seems like she's still sad to be out of school, and is also tired from running around town so much. So now she's mad all the time. We just can't win! But it'll pass. I remember her going through a phase very similar to this last summer. It lasted about a month, so I guess we have another 28 days of this. Ha ha.


Theodore is having a very fun summer, just going with the flow as usual. He's so easy going! The only thing he really doesn't like is going to the splash pads, because he doesn't like it when water sprays him in the face. Poor kiddo! He loves going swimming though -- I hold him on my hip and he splashes the water with one arm and wears himself out. :-)


Here are some pictures of the three of them being crazy in the sun room this morning. :-)  

Oliver's aquarium

A couple of weeks ago, Oliver decided to build a Lego aquarium. He worked on it for about an hour the first day, then another hour or so the following day. He announced that he was done, and asked me to come look at it.

Confession here -- sometimes Oliver's Lego creations all kind of look the same to me. (Is that terrible?) I'm proud of him, and I tell him so. I'm glad that he loves Legos so much, and I love watching him work, but . . . to me they usually look like the same kind of thing. A long, flat building or a long boat, or a big police station with all of the same kinds of stuff in it. (He is totally awesome though! I love how his mind works!)

So at first, I saw this and I said, "Yay!! It looks great!" without really looking at it.

And then I got closer and saw all of the detail that he'd put into his aquarium.

One side is two levels, with a parking garage underneath and animal tanks above:

This is one of my favorite details -- a long walkway leading from the parking garage to the admissions window:

Here's the attendant sitting at his desk, waiting for customers:

Inside, past the walkway, is the animal research control center, where marine biologists observe the animals. (At first glance, I thought this was a kitchen, ha ha.)

Oliver also used the windows from his airport to make a shark tank:

And there's also a sea snake exhibit, with a chicken for the snake to eat. :-)

He also made a security desk with a security camera, a small fish tank, a touch pool, and a gift shop. :-)

Pretty cool!

Oliver's clone walker

After a brief (very brief!) hiatus from building with Legos, Oliver got back into it again big time this week. He made a couple of police stations, an animal rescue center, and a restaurant. Then, yesterday afternoon he decided that he wanted to draw his own Lego directions for a Star Wars clone walker and then build the model based on his design. :-)

Here he is, with his own directions! Later on he added text to describe the parts of the model, but I was busy with a fussy baby and didn't get a picture of it.


Here's the front of the walker, with a rotating laser cannon and other cool stuff (I can't remember what he called everything).


On the back, he added a storage unit for holding droids and tools.



Good job, Oliver! :-)

Oliver's Lego Christmas scene

Last week, Oliver got a new Lego magazine in the mail. Each issue has a building challenge, where kids are given a theme to create with Legos, and then they can mail in pictures of their creations. The top 5 winners get Lego gift cards.

Oliver has never wanted to do the building challenge before (too many other fun things to do, I guess!), but when I told him that this issue's theme is "Christmas scene," he said, "Oh, I need to get to work on that right away!" Ha ha ha.

I thought it was going to take him a while to decide what to do, but in typical Oliver fashion he knew exactly what he was going to build, how he was going to build it, and which pieces he would need. About 25 minutes later, this is what he created!



Note: the chimney also has a guard and a control panel, to keep the bad guys away from the tree. :-)


Putting some final touches on the tree:

Ages 7 and up? No problem!

This year the kids' birthday party was in the morning, and we were mean parents (ha ha) and made them wait until after their naps/rest time to open their birthday gifts. As soon as Oliver got up from resting, he made a beeline for the gift bag from Grammy. :-) He knew that she had bought him a new Star Wars Lego set, and of course he wanted to put it together right away!



Since it had so many pieces, I asked him if he'd rather until his daddy woke up from his nap, just in case he needed help. But of course, Oliver said, "No thanks, Mom. I got it."

And he did. I just love watching him work, he's such an awesome little guy. :-)




On a cute note, this is what Miss Buttercup was doing while Oliver worked so studiously:


Glitter glue. Lots and lots of glitter glue. :-)

Check this out!

Oliver is getting really good at putting Lego sets together. A couple of weeks ago, we bought him this set and he put about 95% of it together by himself. It only took him about 2 hours, too! I say "only" because it had over 500 pieces and it would have taken me probably closer to 4 hours to put it together by myself (sadly, that's not a joke). ;-)

Yesterday he picked out this truck set:


It only took him a little over 30 minutes to put together!




It's so neat the way his mind works. I just love my sweet boy! Yay for Oliver! :-)

Another Lego police station

Oliver made another police station with his Legos last week. His last police station was pretty neat, but this one has even more detail!

Like this prison cell:


See? There's a bad guy inside!


It even has a drive-up ATM:


And a swimming pool:


I really like this coffee maker:



And here's a trash can for all of the garbage:


Good job, Oliver!

More Legos!

The other day, Grammy babysat Buttercup all morning and afternoon, so I got to hang out at home with my two boys! While Theodore took one of his numerous naps, Oliver and I sat at the table and built with Legos. I made an ice cream truck, and Oliver made this neat police boat/fire truck combination.

He was really proud (rightfully so!) of the boat trailer:


And he even added an umbrella to give the boat driver some shade, how nice is that? :-)