We’ve been having a lot of trouble with the early evening hours around here lately. The boys are tired, hungry and cranky. Zach is still working and I’m trying to get dinner together. If the kids don’t have something to occupy them the start messing with each other and inevitably someone ends up crying. Can anyone else out there relate? Yeah. That’s what I thought.

One activity I’ve found to keep Wyatt occupied during the witching hour is something I’ve dubbed “Lego Challenge!”

He plays pretty well with Legos on his own, but even at this young age he’s acquired a pretty impressive collection of bricks. Opening up the Lego bucket can be pretty overwhelming, especially when he doesn’t have any project in mind. What I’ve started doing is pulling a selection of pieces out and putting them in a bowl. I always make sure to pull a good selection of wheels, doors, windows and little guys. All the while I make a big production out of it and pretend that I’m outraged if he peeks at what I’m picking because it’s a big “secret”.

Once I’ve got a bowl together, I issue a challenge. Some of the challenges I’ve issued include:

• Build a truck.
• Build a boat.
• Build a playground.

Don’t over think the challenges. Once the challenge was to build a table with food on it and his response was, “Oh no Mom! I wanted you to say ‘build a house’.”

After a while, he gets so into what he’s building that he starts dipping into the big bucket for more bricks and he stops asking for new challenges. Which is exactly what I was after in the first place.