Maniac

My son is very into Legos. He probably gets that from his older brother, who is also a Lego lover. You could say they both embody this commercial from my youth:

They are both Legomaniacs. The older one has much more skill putting things together, and he should since he's twelve years older, but the younger one is doing his best to close that age gap.

At first, he used to get simple Lego sets, but still often needed help putting them together. Recently, we've been getting him much more difficult sets, though, and he's getting better and constructing them.

He got a big Guardians of the Galaxy spaceship last Christmas.

And managed to put it together all by himself.

But then we got him a bunch of Chinese knock-off Legos for his birthday last year, and the instructions were so bad that he needed a lot of help.

This Christmas, though, he got a bunch of Legos, both legit ones and the knock-offs. He didn't ask for a single bit of help though. He plugged his way through all of them all by himself, and several of them were very complicated, and had garbage instructions. Here's what he made. First, the Harry Potter Lego set with Grawp the giant.

That one is an actual Lego set, and their instructions are always pretty good, so he can breeze through those.

He also did this Lego boat with the scuba divers.

Again, legit Legos, so much easier.

He also got an Avengers Quinjet, a much bigger and more complicated project, and on top of that, a Chinese knock-off with poor instructions. He worked on it all day on Christmas Day, though, and put it together nicely.

Last of all came his new addition to the Harry Potter castles that he got on his birthday. This one is the clock tower. It also was a Chinese knock-off. The instructions were bad, and he even came upon several pieces that were missing. He simply ran upstairs, located a similar piece in his Lego stash, and replaced it with that. It wasn't long before he was done.

Now he's got it added beside his other castle pieces, and he's got quite a setup.

Every year, Lego makes another addition to the Hogwarts castle, so we may have to see if we can get the new piece for his birthday...although, considering that the knock-offs come via slow boat past China it may be more likely that he gets it for Easter.

Anyhow, I'm really impressed with how well he does with them. Hopefully, all  this building is programming his mind in ways that will really help him to secure a good job when he grows up. If nothing else, he can be one of those Lego designers some day...unfortunately, he'll probably be a nerdy toy collector like his dad as well.