Paul and the Family

Okay, I have to admit that Brian really really likes Star Wars. Lately he’s been on a real Star Wars kick — he dresses himself as a Jedi knight, he talks about the characters all the time, and so forth.

I remember shortly before Episode III came out, Brian was talking with a friend of ours (an adult) who had been in school with me a couple of years ago and had come back to visit. After the conversation, that friend remarked that Brian knew a lot more about Star Wars, especially about Episode III, than he did.

Admittedly, back then Brian and I had made a game of trying to guess as much as we could about the story of Episode III, based on things like the Lego sets and action figures that came out a few weeks before the movie did, so that helped a lot with Brian’s knowledge of Episode III — but in any case there’s no denying that he’s a devoted fan.

(Just to clarify, since Episode III is rated PG-13, Brian has most definitely not seen it, nor will he for a long time (but don’t tell him I said that). In fact he’s never seen any Star Wars movie all the way through. Thankfully, in the parts of the movies with fight sequences and violence, they’ve tended to chop the movie into lots of short “scenes” on the DVD, so it’s easy to skip over portions of the movie without missing more than you’d want to.)

This morning I got a confirmation that Star Wars has been a significant theme in the play around our house. Early in the morning I was watching Sarah while Kelli made a phone call (the boys were both still asleep). I accidentally sat down on a toy lightsaber — you know the kind with the “blade” that collapses into the handle. (At the time the blade was collapsed so that it was just a handle.) So I casually pulled it out from under me and set it down on the floor, wondering if 10-month-old Sarah would pay attention to it.

I didn’t need to wonder for long. Almost immediately she picked it up, held it with both hands exactly like it’s designed to be held, and started swinging it left and right, while making a sound.

I guess she’s been exposed to that sort of behavior often enough to know what what you’re supposed to do with a lightsaber.

Aren’t kids amazing, especially when they’re your own? =)

Since he was two (he’s four-and-a-half now), Brian has been building with Legos. And I’m not talking about the big chunky Duplo blocks for toddlers—I mean the real honest-to-goodness little tiny ones. To be quite frank, Brian is (already) the best Lego designer I’ve ever met, both in terms of creativity as well as quantity of output. (Even now, at age 4.5, I can safely claim that he has already built more original Lego designs than I have, by a significant margin).

Now that Adam’s turned two, he’s started “coming of age” in that respect, too. He’s always been more into the stacking, building kinds of baby toys than Brian ever was — Adam actually really likes Duplo blocks and has played with them for some time, whereas Brian hardly ever showed any interest in them. Add to that the fact that Adam has always been very aggesive about wanting to do and pushing himself to do the things that Brian does, and you can probably see where I’m headed.

So without further ado, let me proudly announce that last Sunday Adam built his first original Lego creation. Brian and I had set out to re-build one of our Lego Star Wars models (Obe-Wan Kenobi’s ship from Episode II). Of course it was taking us forever to find every piece, so Adam got bored of that quick and announced that he was going to build his own ship — and so he did!. I was so proud I could hardly contain myself — I had to run and get the camera immediately: