Moision Madness

Ezra turned eight on Monday and this year we finally dove into elementary school parties with a joint Lego party with his friend, Jack, whose birthday was Saturday. The party was — at Jack’s request — on Sunday, the day in between both birthdays.

We hired the company that put on a Lego camp that Jack and Ezra attended in January. The “teacher” put on a little class for the kids and then they got to build machines to battle on the battle track.

Here are his very fancy Ninjago samples.

The kids loved the building, I think especially because he had pieces to motorize their creations.

Here are the birthday boys — very busy.

Of course, Bruce did some building, too. But his super machine was a colossal disappointment.

Here’s his battle against Finn’s machine.

After all the battling, the kids did a great job cleaning up. Ezra took a quiet moment to peruse the teacher’s Star Wars Lego magazine.

Pretty soon it was time for singing and cake. Jack’s mom made cupcakes; I made the chocolate Lego bricks and minifigures for the tops.

There was the normal amount of after-cake backyard craziness.

And then it was time for the kids to go home. A couple — Jenner and Ruby — stuck around and helped Ezra open his gifts. I was worried about him opening his presents when I wasn’t available to watch, so I told him he had to make a list so that he could do thank you notes. He surprised me by just writing the notes as he opened the gifts. They are brief, but awesome.

My favorite is that last one to Jack. He gave Ezra the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots game. When I told Ezra what it was called he said, “I don’t want to write all that” and went on with his playing. Can’t really blame him, I guess.

On Monday night, we had a little family celebration with Ezra’s favorite — In-n-Out burgers — for dinner and his pick of candy apples in lieu of cake.

He opened presents from us and the Becks and was the happiest eight-year-old on the planet with some new Lego sets.

Needless to say, he’s done a lot of building after school the last two days.

Happy Birthday, my sweet boy.

(More pictures here.)

Ezra had a play date with his friend Jenner this afternoon after school. They played inside and outside, and although both Bruce and I were home, we weren’t watching them the whole time. This evening when I went to use bathroom upstairs something had obviously gone on in there. The toilet seat was up and the toilet paper was pulled on the roll into the toilet. I got a little nervous about the potential flood, but broke the piece off and successfully flushed the toilet.

A little later, Finn said, “Mommy, do you know why there’s not much toilet paper left on the roll?” He proceeded to tell me how Ezra and Jenner had put the paper into the toilet and flushed so they could watch it unravel into the toilet. Needless to say, I found Ezra and told him not to do it again.

But then I asked him where he got that idea. After hemming and hawing for a while, he finally whispered, “Calvin and Hobbes.”

A little while after that I found this List of Fun he’d written out for the play date.

I love that it says not to do the toilet paper flush thing again. You might think that was added later because of my directive, but in fact, it’s because it wasn’t as great as Calvin and Hobbes made it out to be. Ezra said the toilet paper didn’t come off the roll very fast and it wasn’t much fun. Thank goodness.

I’m rethinking our decision to introduce Ezra to Calvin and Hobbes.

We have a very special guest blogger today. Ezra would like to share about a Lego microship he built. Take it away, Ezra!

So, first, I found a piece from my Samurai Mech (“Mek”). It was a perfect piece for a microship.

Next, I gathered pieces: two plates and two transparent pieces for the cockpit. Then I started putting them together. I started with the main piece, then I got a yellow piece. I put it inside the slit that there was. Then I put the red piece over it so it was held on.

Then I built the cockpit. At first it was just the two transparent pieces and a small slope. I put the slope over both transparent pieces. I put it on the ship. Then I thought, “That doesn’t look too good. I need another piece.” I found another piece to add detail. I put the cockpit right at the end of the piece.

Then I thought, “Hmmm, it needs details.” I found two dragon blades, two joy sticks and two pieces the dragon blades and joy sticks could fit onto. I put them on the two remaining studs on the piece from the Samurai Mech. Then I put on the dragon blades and the joy sticks. (The joy sticks were easy to find because I never use them.)

Next I gathered pieces for a tail fin. I found two pieces that could be a perfect tail fin. They were both blue. They have no stickers, although they used to have stickers. I took one off and then I thought, “Wait, I shouldn’t do this because that was part of another one of my inventions that a minifigure could go on.” But then I thought, “Bah! I could just do it because this another one of my microships.”

Then I put a gray grill piece on just in front. Then I found a way to put it on just at the right angle.

So then I thought, “Hmmm I don’t want the engine to overheat. It needs more grills.” Then I found a few pieces. I put them together. Then I put them on a few remaining spaces.

And then I thought, “Hmmm boosters and guns.” I gathered the pieces for the boosters and put them on the two remaining spaces that wouldn’t plug up the cockpit. Those were the final parts of my microship.

So there are boosters, guns, dragon blades to scratch other microships, a tail fin, a cockpit and some grills so it won’t overheat, and some joy sticks to add detail.

Editors Note: Ezra loves to read but hates to write. I think this is a two-part issue: 1) the physical act of writing is difficult for him and 2) he has so many ideas in his head, he can’t keep up when he’s writing and he loses his train of thought. But I want to encourage him to write and help him with the process, so we tried something new this morning — we decided to have him write a guest blog post. He started off writing a draft in his notebook …

… but after the first page he was frustrated and wanted me to write it for him. I decided to enlist the voice memo app on my phone and recorded him telling the story of how he built the ship. I then transcribed it for him and we went back and edited it together. I’m hopeful that having him see his story completed here will encourage him to do more writing in the future. We’ll see!