A good chunk of today was spent trying to organize our son Theo’s bedroom and closet – a project which will easily take the whole weekend, since Theo is not as enthusiastic about getting rid of stuff as I am. And whenever I pull out a toy he hasn’t played with for a year, he suddenly becomes fascinated by it. However, today, we managed to organize his Legos and he gave up about ten soft toys, which are now sitting in a bag waiting to be given away. Tomorrow, I am hoping we will tackle his bins full of plastic toys, and that a large gift to less fortunate children somewhere will come out of this clean-out. My approach with him is that he is 10 now and many of these toys were acquired when he was 5. He doesn’t really need so many 5-year old’s toys, right?

The stuffed toys didn’t make it out of the door today. What I ended up giving away today was a Nanoblock mini Lego dragonfly kit that Theo had asked for this when we were at a science museum in San Francisco. I’d bought it for him because I’m a sucker for Legos, especially as they are a creative distraction from screens. However, when Theo and I tried to build the dragonfly model, we had trouble following the minimalist instructions. I put the kit away for “when Theo’s older.” But today, I realized that, just as there is little point in keeping the toys that were fun for 5-year old Theo, I shouldn’t really hold onto toys that might be more suited to 12-year old Theo. He may be interested in completely different things in a couple of years’ time. So, when I went to pick Theo up from a playdate with his friend Samuel (see March 16, September 7), I gave the dragonfly kit to Samuel, along with a pack of origami notecards. He was thrilled. Since Samuel’s parents are both trained architects and he is a more gifted builder than Theo – and me! – I thought he’d figure out how to build this tiny insect. I asked him to text me a picture when he was done. Sure enough, a picture came through on my phone shortly afterwards with a message saying, “I did it in 6 minutes!”