Let's Play Together

One thing I'm really looking forward to this year is for Alex and Jonathan to really start playing together. Alex loves to watch Jonathan and tries to get involved in anything his big brother is doing. Understandably, this can be intensely annoying for a three year old set on constructing a train track or completing a puzzle. Jonathan still needs a lot of redirection - his default is to push Alex away or, failing that, to tackle him into submission.

This past week, Jonathan was playing with the puzzle blocks, small plastic cubes that can be arranged to form six different pastoral scenes. Alex of course came charging over and grabbed a few. I was playing on the floor with them and thought I'd try something new before Jonathan earned himself a timeout. I told Jonathan "Let's play together with Alex."

First we encouraged Alex to explore the blocks. He took one in each hand and banged them together, and we gave him a round of applause for "making music." Jonathan and I each banged a set too, and Jonathan danced and squinted like Jon Bon Jovi during a guitar solo. We even cooperated by banging against each other's blocks. Alex had an enormous grin to be playing with his big brother and Jonathan didn't seem to mind that the puzzle wasn't being solved.

Jonathan's very good at building tall block towers - really good, actually. Twelve or fifteen blocks high is not big deal for him. So I had him build a tower on the coffee table while I held Alex. The puzzle blocks are so light, with nice straight sides and sharp edges - perfect for tower work. Once Jonathan had a tower, we let Alex go. He walked right over to it and fluttered his hands near the base, looking back and forth and me and Jonathan. Finally he pushed it over with a crash! Jonathan cheered and clapped, I clapped, and Alex looked delighted. Jonathan must have built forty towers that night, and let Alex knock them all over.