Ivan and Ezri have been playing hard to assemble all the LEGO sets he received for his birthday.

At the park

At the library

Ivan loves playing Pokemon cards more than most things these days.

Although when he loses and his Pokemon are defeated, he grieves.

But when he wins, he celebrates!

And over the last couple weeks, he’s learned to take the losses more gracefully – though he still really wants to continue playing until he has a victory.

He is getting good at adding the points needed to win and at developing strategies for card combinations that are strong. It becomes clear that he is gamer.

Ivan really likes this birthday present.

Here he is consulting the instructions.

And creating the robot stack.

What could possibly make these robot stackers cooler?

If you said “putting a small Wookiee on top” you got it right.

We also would’ve accepted the answer, stacking the robots nine tall and chanting, “Here comes the Wookiee walking,” then knocking the whole thing over with a small plastic Wookiee.

Ivan likes building traps for bad guys with the magnatiles. These snap together tiles continue to be a great construction toy that Ezri and Ivan use together to build imaginary landscapes from traps to rocketships.

There is some great teamwork as the two construct together.

Ezri tucked in the bad guys so they could sleep well in their trap.

We used vintage Star Wars molds to make all the Vaders, Leias, Lukes and R2D2s we needed in pink, blue, and green.

Ezri made up the game where you wear play dough on your nose.

Ivan did it with his favorite green play dough.

Play dough pie making with a friend

Ivan did not want to wear clothes today. I even offered long sleeves and long pants which he always wants even in August heat. Nope. I decided since we didn’t need to leave home, I’d let it be.

He enjoyed drilling pegs into this board.

He then loosened them with the drill and removed them with the dino-grabber.

When he learned there would be no lunch until he got dressed, he finally put on his pants.