Deconstructionism.

Sometimes when it comes to Eli, destructive and creative forces collide. A recent example of this (that I clearly contributed to), relates to an electronic toy car of Eli's. He and I both found the song it played to be rather annoying (why does a car need to play a song anyway?) and after a while it no longer worked very well...so, Eli decided that he wanted to pull it apart and use the bits to make robots. The problem was that this car was reasonably well assembled and couldn't just be pulled apart. So, to solve the problem, I handed Eli a hammer and sent him outside...



He really enjoyed this job (no surprises there) and now that it is broken down into it's component pieces, the 'annoying yellow car' is now ready to be turned into robots. Eli's plan here is to sticky tape the various bits and pieces onto cardboard boxes. And thanks to his handiwork with the hammer, he now has wheels, gears, wires, springs, screws and assorted bits of yellow body parts to complete the task.



Overall, I think this is a good way to accommodate Eli's creativity and his willingness to destroy things...having said that, I have had to hide the hammer now as I don't want to encourage the reckless destruction of toys too much!

Lump

Having recently called Eli a 'lump', when he was hiding under his sheets, I recalled the Presidents of the United States of America song of the same name. Since Eli liked being called a lump I mentioned that "Lump lingered last in line for brains..." and then he wanted to know what on Earth I was yabbering on about. As a result of the ensuing conversation, I have now unwittingly introduced my little mate to a whole new genre of music. He was pretty keen to hear the CD and he now also likes "Peaches" and "Dune Buggy". His favourite song is still "Lump" though, because it is such a good song to dance along to, as you can see in this video.