lego bricks and pieces

i know after this week i am officially a lego mum. oh my word. joseph has been super lucky and well loved by friends and family over the past couple of years and has received many lego sets, much to his delight - and as a mum, i have to say i've been well impressed with him. he's been very careful with the pieces and has rebuilt the sets over and over and over. he is absolutely lego obsessed. bonus, he likes to follow the instructions and do it "right."

however. he is only five years old now and over time, a few pieces have been misplaced... so doug and i decided we would do something about storage and replacing the pieces that went missing. doug went through and rebuilt every single set, which was not an easy task, especially with said five year old wanting to "help" the entire time, which mostly consisted of him hoarding the pieces doug needed. each of the sets went into a large ziplock bag with the manual once complete and i wrote down any missing pieces (amazingly only 11 in total from all of them) using the set code and then brick codes found in the back of each of the manuals, before each of those bags went into a storage tub. he is now playing nicely by the rules of one set at a time and is thrilled to have a system (he's obviously been brainwashed by his very ocd parents, because he is just as particular as us), so when he is does, he brings it to one of us to "zip up" and then he puts it away before choosing another. funniest thing is, some of the zip lock bags have arrows to show how to close them. heaven forbid that you close them sliding the arrows the wrong way. he has a fit! "no! no mum! slide it the way it says!" such a little character.

anddddd, you can order single pieces online from lego.com. does everyone know that?! massive thanks to my friend for that tip off a few years ago. all of the pieces we needed, minus one, which was part of a disney cars lego set were available, but that was an easy solve... we ordered the same piece, without the dinoco print across it! so easy to do and our lego boy is thrilled to pieces.

heads up though, if you're in australia, the postage is outrageous! $15 for those 11 tiny pieces!i keep reminding myself that i'm the one that wanted them and as it's a demand thing that they can charge whatever they want haha. andddd it's not quick. i ordered in april and they came earlier this week. be prepared for a long wait. but it's done, they are here and everyone is happy.

hooray for lego!