A Bit Fishy

Robbie has been in the doghouse! I have been trying to think of something good to say about him, but I was too cross to be objective. The best I can come up with is that he is brave. He certainly likes to live dangerously, he told me that I had a face like a trout! I have never claimed to be a great beauty, but I was not impressed by his unkind words. I was very tempted to ask him if he had looked in a mirror lately, but as the saying goes 'least said soonest mended'. If he was in that sort of mood I wasn't going to bother talking to him so we had a very quiet evening on Monday.


By Tuesday evening he wanted to say sorry but he has never quite grasped the concept 'when in a hole stop digging'. He tried to be extra nice and extra chatty in the hope that I had forgotten what he said - I hadn't! I reminded him what he said and he told me that he was sorry. If he had stopped at that point he may have been okay but he went on to say that I didn't really look like a trout, it was just my mouth that was trout like! I was driving at the time so he survived unscathed - but still unforgiven!

As the evening wore on I thawed a bit, life is too short to argue and I rather doubt that he would recognise a trout if he met one! It was hard to stay cross with him as I watched him open and build the new Lego minifigures that I had bought him, the first of series 7. He got a hippy and a galaxy patrol person, he was so excited. I may look like a trout but I still know how to bring a smile to his face.

The Wrong Head

After the drama of the Lego men on Sunday, I was quite literally left to pick up the pieces. By Sunday evening Robbie had lovingly restored most of the Lego people to their original state but there was still a small jar of parts that required attention. 

As soon as Robbie had been despatched to work, I settled down to solve the puzzle. Robbie had most of the body parts for the palace guard but it was the wrong head. So at 6.20 am I was looking at mug shots of Lego men on the computer trying to identify the 'wrong' head. Just before 7am I finally identified the head, it was the head of the man in the dinosaur suit. The dinosaur was not among the 'downstairs' Lego people and a quick trip to the bookcase to inspect the the 'upstairs' Lego men revealed that he wasn't there either. However the head of the palace guard had mysteriously reappeared, placed neatly in front of the top row of minifigures.


It didn't require a crystal ball to work out who was responsible. I woke my son and threatened him with cruel and unusual punishment if the dinosaur didn't reappear right now - it did!! It is easier to deal with my son when Robbie is not around because I don't have an echo. I explained to him that I understood that he may have thought it was funny at first, but it had upset Robbie and caused me untold grief so now it had to be put right without any more fuss. He went back to check his room but he came back empty handed saying that he was sure that there were no more 'hostages'.


I always have plenty to do before heading off to work, but on Monday as well as dealing with the food shopping and the laundry, I had to sort out the Lego men. Believe it or not I found a site that sells spare parts for Lego minifigures. I put in an order to replace a missing baseball bat, graduation certificate, and helmet and I bought some spare bases. I don't think my son was responsible for most of these things, they probably went up the hoover (over time not all together) but I am not going to tell Robbie that or he will hide the hoover!


I also catalogued every single figure and noted the accessories that it should have, so that in future Robbie can check them whenever the mood takes him.  Now hopefully I can stop thinking about minifigures for a while otherwise I really might scream!! Just for once it would be nice to have an uneventful few days.

The Naming of Parts

Sunday morning should be quiet and harmonious, especially on mother's day, but it wasn't. Robbie's rather splendid birthday card must have put ideas into my son's head because Robbie awoke to find that his Lego men had been interfered with, legs, heads hats and hair had been reassigned to different bodies leaving a very odd looking crew. To say that Robbie was incandescent with rage would be a gross understatement! He has been rampaging around like a troll with tooth ache.

He has been on the internet checking the design of each mini figure to make sure that each head was reunited with the correct body parts and accessories. He got on his hands and knees and crawled around the floor in search of missing body parts. For some reason the act of getting on his knees caused him to begin chanting, he ran through every expletive and insult in his vocabulary (and a few that weren't). When I opened the bedroom door I almost jumped out of my skin to find him on his hands and knees apparently worshipping the minifigures on the bookcase. Having run out of expletives he was running through a selection of dark threats and insults. It is the second time this week that his actions have left me speechless. I just stood there wondering if it was time to call for the men in white coats. He looked up and announced that he had a headless guardsman and the baseball player had lost his bat. I have a feeling it is going to be a very long day!!

Conspiracy Theory

As most people will know Robbie has an over-active collecting gene. As well as all the usual things such as railway related items, model trains, books. shoes, ties, bags and countless other things, Robbie also collects Lego mini figures. 


Sometimes I buy him two or three mini figures, but he rations himself and only makes one at a time. Each figure comes in a sealed bag so it is a bit of a guessing game about the contents and he gets so excited when he opens the bag to find a figure that he hasn't already got. He sits at the table and builds his mini figure, then he gets everyone to admire it, then more often than not he posts a photo of the latest figure on Facebook. I know it is a bit weird, but it is fairly harmless and it keeps him out of trouble (for a little while at least!).


An Wednesday when I got home from work I noticed that he had a batch of mini figures lined up. I thought it was a bit odd, but I didn't comment on it, nothing much surprises me where Robbie is concerned! The subject of mini figures didn't crop up until later on when we were on our own, but I noticed that Robbie kept glancing at the figures with a rather odd expression, almost as if he was angry with them. Eventually Robbie called me over and pointed to the artist figure. I looked, but clearly I was missing something because Robbie kept on pointing. He told me that someone had made one of his unopened mini figures and then lined all the figures up on the table. I told him that it was unlikely, perhaps he had just forgotten about the artist, but apparently Robbie (and elephants) never forget!


If it was a conspiracy there was only one suspect, the son who must not be named. The following evening I asked if he had been involved in the mini figure conspiracy. He laughed so much, but when he stopped laughing he explained that he had found our dog Meg chewing the mini figure pack, so he took it away from her, rescued the pieces, cleaned them up and then built the Lego man so that the pieces didn't get lost. So it wasn't really a conspiracy, it was a rescue. 

Trouble with Aliens

When I was a little girl I had an irrational fear of standing too close to my bed because I believed that the (imaginary) Red Indian who lived under my bed would reach out and grab me. This made it necessary to leap onto the bed from as far away as possible to be sure that I stayed safe. I watched far too many cowboy films when I was little! As far as I can remember my sleep was never disturbed by aliens - until this week! In fact The Clangers are the only aliens I recall from my childhood and certainly weren't scary.

On Wednesday evening I went to bed fairly late and just as I was getting

warm, comfortable and very sleepy Robbie bounded upstairs and launched himself onto the bed as if he was being chased by a whole posse of imaginary foes. He announced excitedly that he had an alien, he was clutching a Lego mini figure pack which he had carefully opened to reveal the pieces necessary to build an alien mini figure. He settled himself on the bed in a Buddha like pose and began to build his alien, while I snuggled under the duvet in search of sleep. Robbie shook me to inform me tat the alien's weapon was too short. My knowledge of alien weaponry is severely limited (I don't think the Clangers had weapons) and I have absolutely no desire to further my knowledge of such things, especially not at 2am! Apparently a purple light-sabre type thing was missing, and Robbie wasn't going to settle until he found it. It was not easy to sleep when Robbie put the light on and then knelt on the bed stark naked looking down to see if the missing part had fallen onto the carpet. It was even harder to sleep when he decided that he had to lift up the duvet and check all the bedding. By this time I was ready to kill him because I really needed to sleep. We agreed that he would let me sleep if I promised to look for the part in the morning.

True to my word I searched for the part the next day without success, so I ended up returning the figure to the shop because there was a piece missing. Imagine my embarrassment when the missing part turned up, it had been caught inside the packaging all the time. He is a very happy chap now that his alien's weapon has been restored to the correct proportions and even happier because his latest mini figure is a very cool looking rapper.

Why Are Bananas Funny?

After a hectic and exhausting week I always look forward to Friday evenings because I don't work on Fridays and it is lovely to spend some quality time with Robbie. Usually Friday evenings don't live up to my expectations for one reason or another and this Friday was no exception. I had made an appointment for Sam to have his hair cut at 5pm, thinking that I would have plenty of time to pick Mr B up afterwards, but he changed the goalposts and decided to come home on an earlier train. Robbie said he would get the bus, but by some miracle I managed to be at the station by 5.35pm to pick him up! I thought he would be pleased, but being Mr Autistic he got himself into a right strop because I had changed the goalposts and it took him ages to get over it.

I tried my best but I couldn't manage to put a smile on his face, so I had to use my secret weapon - Lego! He carefully opened the bag and tipped out the pieces of his latest Lego man, he was very impressed, it was a man in a gorilla suit holding a banana. I thought there was something vaguely familiar about it but Robbie seemed to be deeply amused by the banana. I am not sure why he found it so funny, but at least it put a smile on his face!

A Kid in a Toy Shop!

We went to Toy R Us on Friday evening. Robbie was a bit subdued because he was worried about his friend who is ill, but it didn't take long before he was like a kid in a toy shop, in his case a very big kid! They now have a Lego themed feature wall with giant sized Lego men looking down on the shoppers. Robbie loves Lego and I was sure he would spot the digital camera made to look as if it was built from Lego bricks and the light that is like a pile of Lego bricks. He had passed the feature wall before he brightened up so he missed them, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they find their way on to his Christmas list.

The real purpose of the visit was to buy Christmas and birthday presents for my nephew and niece rather than to provide a distraction for Robbie. Emily had come with us to help us to choose suitable gifts, it is surprising how soon you forget what sort of things interest suit a particular age group when your own children are well past that stage. Jack is four and the sort of child who never sits still, he loves cars but he has so many that choosing something that he didn't already have was almost impossible. There was a fire engine set with lots of accessories, it made three different siren noises, Jack would have loved it but my sister in law would never have forgiven me! Emily Led me to the back wall with a huge display of Playmobil, she eagerly pointed out all the sets that she used to have and declared that Playmobil was the best toy ever. After long discussion we decided on two different Playmobil sets, one for his birthday and one for for Christmas.

We noticed that we had mislaid Robbie somewhere in the store. He wasn't hard to find because he was wearing one of his more vivid tops. He had strayed to the other end of the back wall where every kind of Lego filled the shelves. A Lego Technic set had caught his attention and he was very reluctant to be dragged away. We didn't manage to drag him very far, he dug his heels in as we passed the Hornby section and we left him there while we went off to choose a present for a very bright and sophisticated nine year old. It proved very hard to choose, but Emily reminded me of how much she and Laura loved the kits that enabled them to make lotions and potions, soap making was a special favourite. I will not say exactly what we chose, but it was something along those lines.

Robbie was reluctant to leave, he had to check out the multi media section, then when I thought I would grow old waiting for him he went to look at bikes. The thought of Robbie on a bike fills me with horror, some people are not designed to wear lycra!!