Look at how happy this kid is. He look sick to you? No? Well he was. He was sick a bunch over the holidays, and each time he was all better by the next day. Just look at how happy and not sick he is.

Me, on the other hand? I’m dying over here. Three-year-olds can get deathly ill and be fully recovered by the next day. They do this because they pass their sickness on to you. But will you fully recover the next day? No ho ho hooooo, you’re looking at a three-day romp in bed-ridden Influenza-ville.

See, the thing about kids that they don’t tell you (or they might have but I sure as hell wasn’t listening) is that they’re basically little germ factories, and once you get ’em in preschool, or let them visit their cousins, or even set foot out of their bedroom, they’re gonna come down with whatever bug is around so their immune system can get stronger by beating it. Then they pass it on to you to try and kill you because — evolution.

All told, our kid got sick on three separate days over the last couple weeks which means both my wife and I have been hanging on to dear life by the barest of threads ever since. I’m not sure when my voice will return and she doesn’t think she’ll walk again. But just look how happy the kid is!

So how’d he get sick so much? Well, because it’s the holidays and we gotta go do happy holiday things. We took the kid to happy parties filled with happy germ-magnet kids. We went to happy family gatherings to get happy holiday presents along with a slight touch of pneumonia from whichever one of his cousins happened to be sick at the time.

Oh yeah. The happy holiday gifts. This would be the second part of the one-two punch.

Holidays in plastic brick hell

It needs to be said that I used to love Legos. I’d played with them for hours as a boy. I collected all different lines, and even once waxed lovingly poetic about my old Lego Castle, still holding together with its valiant armies of knights and varlets back yonder in my father’s house. I regularly counted on Lego to tide my boy over so I could enjoy an event or show. I never dreamed of considering these eponymous bricks a mortal enemy.

Needless to say, my lifelong love affair with Lego came to an abrupt end over the holidays. Everybody gave my kid Lego. Ev-er-y-bo-dy. He got them from my parents, he got them from her parents, he got them from cousins, he got them from friends, and — damn my eyes — he got them from me.

It wasn’t as big a problem as before because the Legos weren’t so small. Up until now the 3-year-old had those great big doofus blocks that were easy to clean up and more importantly, to see on the damn floor. Now he has multiple sets of the little ones, the proper Legos, and some of these pieces, Hell, most of these pieces, are damn near microscopic.

Don’t get me wrong, he loves them. Look how happy he is! But they’re killing me, and I’m already dying from scurvy.

So just imagine the joy of being awakened at night by the phlegm bubbling up in a death rattle from your last working lung, lurching haphazardly out of bed to get more water because you can only breathe out of your mouth so it’s dry as desert sand, and have to circumnavigate what is essentially now a booby-trapped minefield of hard plastic pain. This is why I have no voice left, from all the screaming.

Both sets of grandparents stocked him up with Legos. They planned this. Beware the vengeance of your own parents, new Moms and Dads, for it will be wreaked upon you terribly and most unexpectedly. Well played, Dad.

That’s how I spent my holidays. The kid started them with a holiday party and came back sick, which meant he was totally fine the next day and I was sick all Christmas. We went to a nice little birthday party for one of his friends, same deal again, and he knocked both my wife and I down to mark Hanukkah. Finally we stayed over at his cousins’ place for New Years Eve, same thing again, which means that his mother and I crawled into 2017 feeling like 10 pounds of crap in 5-pound bags that keep walking on Legos no matter how many times we pick the damn things up!

Lessons learned

But look how happy he is. He’s absolutely exuberant. He’s actually bubbling over with joy, with glee, swimming in his own bliss. This kid was sick? Impossible. He’s far too delighted with life to be sick. He must be having some kind of holidays, right?

Right.

Because that’s how our son really ruined the holidays for us. He showed us what they are really all about. It doesn’t matter if you celebrate Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Festivus, or what have you, and it doesn’t matter what hardships and travails you get put through over the holidays, because everyone  gets put through them.

What matters over the holidays is the joy you try to bring to other people, especially to the ones you love. And when that joy is reflected so brightly, and so surely, from your own child, the holidays will never again be the same for you. They are ruined.

It was the holidays and we did happy holiday things. We went to parties. We stayed up late with family. And we got lots of presents! Lots of Lego! He loves Lego! These were just the best holidays ever!

And so, even as my eyes dim with the onset of whatever jaundiced death virus my son has beset me with; as I prepare to amputate my leg below the shin due to the gangrenous infections brought on by the penetration of my flesh by the mask of Lego Batman; I am happy.

I will never be healthy again, but it was worth it.

This weekend we were lucky to be taken on a sneak peak tour of the LEGO Americana Roadshow now on display at the Northbrook Court in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago.  This is an exhibit that you won’t want to miss.  It features 10 iconic structures from U.S. History all recreated with LEGO bricks, including a life-size replica of the Liberty Bell.

The replica’s are amazing and done with an impressive amount of painstaking detail.  We learned some of the tricks they used to achieve their detailed results, including  how they made the lettering around the top of the Liberty Bell and the Trim around the top of the Lincoln Memorial.

The children were fascinated and the exhibit  provided fodder for future builds as well as some historical inquiry.  Which is a great way to have fun and learn all at the same time.

The models are scattered throughout the mall and include:

1. The U.S. Capitol Building (Fun Fact: it took 8 builders 1,700 hours to complete.)
2. Independence Hall
3. The White House
4. Old North Church
5. The Liberty Bell
6. The Washington Monument (Fun Fact: It is 503 bricks tall or 15’11”.)
7. The Lincoln Memorial
8. The U.S. Supreme Court Building
9. The Jefferson Memorial
10. The Statue of Liberty (Fun Fact: It is a 1:25 scale model which means it is just over 9′ tall.)

There is also a play area by the U.S. Capitol model for kids (and adults) to put some of their creative energy to work.

The exhibit is on display here in Chicagoland through July 4th and is totally free, it is a great way to have some fun and be patriotic at the same time.  You can get more details  about the exhibit here: THE LEGO® AMERICANA ROADSHOW IN NORTHBROOK, IL

My family and I attended the special members-only preview of Legoland Discovery Center Westchester in Ridge Hill, N.Y., a much-anticipated event in our household. (There are 10 Legoland Discovery Centers worldwide, five in the United States, and this is the first in the Northeast.) Legoland Discovery Center Westchester opens officially on March 27.

Legoland Discovery Center Westchester review

After you enter, Legoland Discovery Center Westchester starts with a photo opportunity. You can get your picture taken as a family, and later they give you the option to buy the photo. An automatic door then opens into a factory for a hands-on exhibit/guided tour about how they make Legos. Your kid can push some buttons, crank a lever, and it will seem as if you were manufacturing some Legos.

From there you move into a “Save the Princess” moving/shooting ride. If you’ve been to Disney, it’s very similar to the Toy Story Shoot the Zorg ride. It’s pretty fun, and unlike Disney, this has some video game elements as well. (As to be expected, my wife got the high score! She’s a great shot.)

From there you move to the model area. Several architectural models of New York sites are displayed. It is very impressive.

Some of the highlights include: a Yankee Stadium pinball machine, where the Yankees are forever playing the Mets; The Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, St. Peter’s Cathedral, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, and Times Square. Many of New York’s architectural landmarks are preserved entirely in Legos.

One weird part of this is that things are conflated. The MetLife building is on top of Grand Central Terminal. The Guggenheim, Met and the Natural History Planetarium are all right next to each other. And there’s even a Lego version of the Ridge Hill Mall. Even conflated, the buildings are astounding, especially the working subway and the floating police boats.

Also very cool: Every 20 minutes or so it becomes night time, and fireworks explode over the Statue of Liberty, and the buildings all light up. It’s really quite beautiful. Many of the exhibits are interactive. For example, you press a button to make the subway work.

From there you move to the main area of Legoland Discovery Center Westchester. They have the Legoland Fire Academy, which is a play structure/maze. They have the Legoland Master Builders Academy, where you can go for Lego building lessons. They have a car building/racing area with places to build cars and then also test them. You can even go to a movie cinema where they show 4D Lego Movies (the fourth dimension is interactivity — you might get a little wet, or snowed on). You can also take a trip on Merlin’s Apprentice Ride — an indoor flying ride that you pedal to go up and down on as it goes around. Younger kids will love the Duplo area and Lego Friends area.

The center also contains a cafeteria for snacks and meals, and a couple of birthday party rooms to rent for events. As you exit, you pass through a Lego Store, also accessible without going through the LDC. You can buy all sorts of Lego kits and all things Lego here.

A COUPLE OF LEGOLAND SUGGESTIONS                                                    

All in all, there was a lot to love about Legoland Discovery Center Westchester, especially if your kid is crazy for Legos. And we recommend it as an experience! However, there were some challenges at this preview. Perhaps I’m sensitive to this, mainly because I’m a “Disneyphile,” and Disney sets the experience bar extremely high.

Here’s a few things that I hope they can fix or improve so that instead of a 7, the experience is a 9 or 10. 

• BATHROOMS — The Legoland Discovery Center Westchester bathrooms are well-designed, but with one fatal flaw.  No kid-sized sinks! In a place that caters almost exclusively to kids, there is no excuse not to have kid-friendly plumbing. They need to get some step stools, pronto.
• SIGNAGE — Uneven and all over the place. The sign explaining that kids had to be a certain height to ride the Merlin’s Apprentice Ride was very far away from the actual ride. What was even worse is that the ride is a two-person ride, and kids under 4 feet have to be accompanied by an adult.  A woman that we saw with three kids waited 15 minutes for the ride, only to find out that her two kids were too young to ride by themselves and that they couldn’t all ride together because she would have to leave one of the kids on the ground while she rode with the other kid. Fortunately, we saw the situation, and my wife volunteered me to ride with the extra kid. But she would have had a VERY BAD experience if we hadn’t been able to help out.
• STAFFING — Legoland Discovery Center Westchester did not have enough staff in the right places. The Lego Racers Build and Test area had nobody helping out. They were also very short on parts and wheels. You’d think with 10 of these worldwide, they’d have their staffing/Lego parts needs down to a science, but apparently not. Also, the guy who gave the factory tour (our first official experience of Legoland) didn’t have a great personality. As he was leading the tour, he was just kind of ineffectual. That first guy should be their best and most personable worker.
• RETAIL FAIL — I went on Friday to redeem our passes, and the two clerks were not very familiar with the retail computer system. They couldn’t restart or sign into their computers. Then they had a number of technical malfunctions they had no idea how to fix. Worse, they didn’t have manuals or cheat sheets on how to use their computers. It took them half an hour to figure it out. On Sunday, the day of our visit, the place wasn’t that crowded, but the waits were long as they tried to figure out how to get people in the door. They will figure it out, but once again, they have 10 venues already.  These problems should already be solved!

There were a few other things that I could mention, but I don’t want to give people the wrong impression (and I’m cognizant that this was the shakedown, and 3 months from now, most of these logistical problems could be solved). Legoland Discovery Center Westchester was a fun experience and we expect to be back soon. It’s just that, compared to DisneyWorld or even nearby Sesame Place, these guys don’t have their act together yet.

My kids and I Legos. We can spend hours together building a set, sometimes over several days. Our largest set, the Star Wars “Death Star, we built a little at a time over several months. That process of completing a complex set of Legos is like accomplishing one’s fitness goals.

If you have never built with Legos before, the back story may take a quick explanation. Each set comes with instructions, carefully and meticulously drawn up by Lego experts. Each step in the instruction book includes a picture and list of the exact pieces you will need for that step and an illustration of how they fit together. Each step builds on the last step. With each step you get the next list of pieces and you see how they connect to the existing structure.

This precision in building with Legos is not unlike the precision one should take in designing their fitness program. The structure you are building is your fitness goal. Each step is the equivalent of the exercise program for the day. Each life of the step is the equivalent of the particular exercise to perform.

An exercise in defining goals, following through

A key factor in the process of fitness and building with Legos is defining your goal at the beginning.

When you buy a Lego set, you are purchasing a jumble of pieces because they help you complete the finished product you see pictured on the box. When you get the box home and open it, a bunch of loose pieces fall out. When you walk into a gym there are literally dozens of exercise machines and combinations of exercises you can do. The issue is to combine them into a program that you can execute quickly and efficiently to accomplish the goal in the front of your own box.

Much of the time you can’t see how these loose Lego bricks will turn into the picture on the box. That’s why you need that end picture to keep you focused. As you put the pieces together, or go through your exercise sessions, you have to make sure not to lose site of that end goal. Some days are hard. You may not see the end goal within the current state of the structure, but as you add more pieces or rather string together your sessions, your end goal will start to take shape.

If you think you will need help creating the right set of instructions, or program design, consider hiring a personal trainer. If personal training is not your desire, then maybe your program design will consist of Pilates or yoga. One concept is clear when it comes to fitness and building with Legos, you can’t just keep doing the same exercises/adding the same type of bricks every session. Eventually, you get a very monolithic structure that bends and topples over. In other words, a stagnant unchanging fitness program, is not as good for muscle growth.

Find fun in the hard work of fitness, building Legos

Lastly, both a well built Lego structure and healthy lifestyle will lead to hours of fun and enjoyment each day for years to come. Once you build a Lego set, now you get to have fun playing with it. It is the same when you have reached a goal weight and are enjoying your new lifestyle and energy.

But don’t get too comfortable. There will always be maintenance needed. Pieces get loose, pieces fall off. Sometimes you might accidentally break it. This is not much different from the maintenance phase of your training. You need to keep going to the gym if you want to maintain your current level of health.

Remember that some days will be better than others. Expect that once in while you may have an interruption in your routine. Realize that the only way to get back to your goal weight is to break out the instructions again. Call up your personal trainer and get some sessions scheduled. Like Legos, if you wait too long, the pieces get lost and it is harder to find them to properly rebuild the set.

As a child you would never have thought about how your love of Legos could parallel your fitness program. But, as a parent watching your kids build that spaceship or car to completion, as compared with giving 100% in the gym, it may seem like a weird aligning of methods that actually makes sense. Both take work, focus, and commitment before you can enjoy all of the benefits.

About the author

Glenn Dickstein, NYC father of three and Upper East Side resident, is the founder of NeighborhoodTrainers. For information, visit his company’s Facebook or Twitter pages. 

Like most dads I know, I am the type of father that enjoys getting down on the floor with my son to construct simple and complex structures (depending on amount of time and patience level) using blocks, tiles, train-tracks and Lego bricks.

My son, as well as Matt’s boys, are methodical about the way they build their Lego towers, cities, and models. My son looks at the box or the instruction sheet, points to the picture, and always chooses to build exactly what is provided.  He uses skill, concentration, and tons of imaginative play once our structure is created, but rarely does he just pick up Lego bricks and design his own creation.

Recently, we attended the Dad 2.0 Summit, an awesome weekend spent with hundreds of dad bloggers and some well-known family brands.  Fortunately, Lego was one of the brand partners at the event, and we had the unique opportunity to spend some time with Chris Steininger – a Lego Master Builder.  We found Chris to be a great guy, and his job as well as his master-builder stories to be fascinating.  Chris’ passion and genuine love of his job reminded us of Tom Hanks from Big – an adult who gets to play with toys all of the time.

Below is our brief interview with Chris:

How did you become a Lego Master Builder?

C.S.: Becoming a Lego Master Builder was for me, was a bit different it stems from my love of building with Lego as a child. My father and I would play a lot together when he got home from work and he found it was something he enjoyed also. In the end my father talked to a friend who worked at Lego and he was able to get my dad an interview in the model shop where he eventually got the job as a model gluer. He rose through the ranks to become a Lego master builder this was great for me because it meant I got a lot more Lego. My father was able to get me into the model shop during vacations from high school and that’s where I was able to build a solid base of Master Builder skills. After high school I went to work as a carpenter/furniture builder and did this for a few years before being called back to help out building models in the model shop. I have been full time at Lego for 5 years now and 3 of them as a master builder.

Describe how an idea like building a Lightning McQueen Car out of Lego bricks goes from an idea to the completed life-size model?

C.S.: When we build large Lego models we first start with a 3D modeling computer program called Maya to design the model from there we bring it into our program Brick Builder, this turns the model into Lego bricks from their we can build the physical model it shows us a layer by layer view kind of like a CT scan. Models like Lightning McQueen (below) take 1800 hrs to build and uses around 350,000 bricks and weighs 3 tons.

What has been your most positive experience playing & engaging with Lego?

C.S.:The most positive experience with Lego for me is when I participate in Lego events (i.e. Lego Kidfest) and see the joy and pride of creation when the kids build their own models

My son likes to follow the exact step by step directions when building. What can parents like me do to nudge him a little to do more exploratory & free play?

C.S.: So if you have a child that is more into instruction booklet building then BuildTogether.com is the perfect resource for you. It gives you fun and creative alternative building activities that YOU can do with your child.

One final interview note: We were amused to learn that when building a large Lego model, Chris explained that applying glue to EVERY Lego brick was more time consuming than the actual brick building process.

Last Christmas, my parents gave me an ultimatum that we all have to face at some point — get your childhood stuff out of our house (or we will). Among the old trophies, class projects, and ancient electronics were the toys that had survived past my childhood. Somehow, the 13-year-old me knew that I would someday have boys that would love these toys as much as I did. We pulled out the Matchbox cars and accompanying roads, bridges, and garages, and I enjoyed seeing both my boys give them new life. We pulled out a few games too. Perfection is a hit merely for the eagerly anticipated pop, but it turns out that Hüsker Dü, a game my sister and I played for hours, is just a matching game, and a pretty boring one at that.

The biggest find in the treasure trove was a bin containing thousands and thousands of LEGOs. Over the years, I had collected firehouses and fire trucks, police stations and police cars, and every construction vehicle that I could find. My sister and I used these sets to create whole towns where Matchbox cars would dominate the streets, and Barbie would have a conversation with a small yellow man with a red construction hat about the names of their future children. As I looked through the box, I remember thinking that there are very few toys that are pretty much the same today as they were 30+ years ago when I started my collection.

Fast forward to last Thursday when I had the privilege of attending a private party to tell parents about what was going on with LEGO in 2011. It turns out LEGO is huge! It is now the third-largest toy manufacturer in the United States (behind Mattel and Hasbro). LEGO City sets are still their biggest sellers, but LEGO continues to create new worlds including Harry Potter, Cars, and the one I liked the most, Ninjago, a world where two brothers (good and evil) fight to reign supreme over the ancient ninja art of Spinjitsu. Every world extends online with videos, games, designer Q&As, and a community of people sharing ideas.

Though the worlds LEGO creates are pretty amazing, I was especially excited to hear the LEGO representatives talk about their focus on the importance of open play. When I was young, my parents (like most) didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the floor playing with us. My sister and I created our own worlds with LEGOs and we would build on them day after day. These days, many parents are on the floor, often deciding the “right” way for their children to use toys, and few of us give our kids the chance to create and imagine. The LEGO representatives talked about the “Click” that a child feels when they’ve built their version of an airplane or a dinosaur, and all of us know exactly what they’re talking about.

Overall, I really enjoyed catching up with LEGO, and I look forward to both entering the Ninjago world with my sons and also giving them the freedom to imagine their own worlds without judgment from me. Thanks to LEGO for having me!