TBnJ

Back when T was 3.5, he fell in love with a lovely Hot Wheels toy called T-Wrecks. It was orange and it was a dinosaur and it was big; this was all that mattered. He first saw it in a toy sales ad in the newspaper. It was all he could talk about, and it was all he wanted for Christmas. I was not convinced. The online reviews said it was terrible. I believed them. I did not want to buy a big huge piece of plastic. T didn't even like Hot Wheels cars all that much (and still doesn't). I tried in vain to convince T that I was not going to buy it for him for Christmas. His response? "Santa will." And all through November and December he talked about how Santa was going to bring his big orange dinosaur. I finally realized I was not going to win this battle no matter what. So "Santa" caved in, went to Toys'r'us in late December, and bought one of the last ones available. Needless to say, T was overjoyed. One of his uncles had a delightful time assembling the thing. I do believe that there was a demand for coffee before he was willing to continue work on it at one point.

As I expected, T-Wrecks has gotten very little use beyond the initial Christmas experience. It falls apart easily. It scares the living daylights out of J with the awful noises it makes even four years later. It shoots little metal cars randomly, and not all Hot Wheels cars will work on it. Most of all, it takes up a lot of space. It's just not a great toy. It has fulfilled every low expectation I had of it. However, it's T's beloved orange dinosaur, one which he did not want to part with.

We've done a bit of cleaning lately, and so I got brave and broached the topic with T. I suggested to him that if he would let me get rid of his orange dinosaur on Craigslist, he could get a new set of Mars Mission Legos. T sat on my bed and said, "Hmm. Let's think about it. It makes a funny [ozone] smell you don't like. It scares J. And it sometimes shoots cars in my face. I guess we can get rid of it. Can I get more than one set of Legos for it?" Nice try, but no. I offered him one particular set of Legos, and he decided to take the deal.

So this afternoon after school, T took a brief nap and then instead of reading his current Oz book, he was ready to assemble his new Legos. I had initially told him he had to assemble the dinosaur first to make sure we had all the pieces gathered, but since Daddy-o isn't around to help with that endeavor, I let him have the Legos on the promise he will help assemble the dinosaur later. Proving he is his father's child, he's very engrossed in the new Legos. Getting him to look up at the camera for one of the other photos took effort.

Labels: around the house, kid sayings