Hi Linda -

Promised progress report on 2 1/2 year old Dasha and the Soft LEGO:

I put the box in the corner of the living room rug.   She discovered it about 10 minutes after she got up from her nap.   "What's this"  I told her it was Linda's box of stuff.  She opened  -oooo!....Pretty blocks.  She took out a square in one hand, an oblong in the other and put them down    She went back two hands at a time:  "another one" when she picked up each one, putting the squares on the square and the oblongs on the oblong to build two big towers.   I made a fence.   When she wanted a particular color, she took it from my fence.   So ultimately no fence.   She discovered the smile block:  oh smiley face.   then she found the eyes and promptly put the face together.  At the next smile block,  she looked until she found the eyes.  Put them together.   Then the made two kinds of hats:  the brim to the front for a girl; the brim to the back for a boy.   Then it was back to towers.

I put one of the faces on top of a figure.   She looked at it and said baby.  She looked at my figure,  assembled her own (my two feet faced forward; one of hers did, the other out to the side).   She got up on the bottom of her slide to keep making it taller.  Then she put the head on.   "mine is bigger"

Then she knocked down the towers to build them back up again.  I brought in my little LEGO Duplo set in their carry box.   She wanted her snack.  While she ate, she watched me put the Soft LEGO back in the box and move it to my coat.
We watched some PBS.  Played with the little LEGO Duplo.  Then Papa came home.  Only when I was putting my coat on did she look around:  "where are my beautiful blocks.  there're not here.  She saw the box, opened it:  here they are.  Started to take them out.  I told her I had to take Linda's blocks back to Linda.  No, my blocks, my beautiful blocks. She lay her head on the box and hugged it.  My box, my box.  She was just sobbing.  I told her to say bye bye to Linda's box and maybe Linda would come visit and bring the box to visit.   Sobbying all the while, she pushed it to the porch.  Papa picked her up so she could wave bye bye to the box til I got it in the car.

So. all told except for the end - they were a BIG HIT.

Karen Simpkins