Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Trains!

It all started with rainy day trips to Barnes and Nobles to play with their big Thomas the Train table. After several such outings, I finally bought him his own Thomas the Train engine, thinking he might occassionally enjoy pushing it around on the floor. Thus began the obsession. For the next several days he refused to relinquish the train. He even took it to bed with him. (Keep in mind, it is a wooden train. Ouch!) So David and I purchased a child's used train set from ebay as Christian's Christmas present. Apparently we aren't very good at hiding gifts, because he has now stumbled upon the bag several times, much to his excitement (Ahdah, ahdah, ahdah!!!) Each time he has taken a few pieces, so he now possesses five trains, a bridge, and one sad, straight piece of track. All day he pushed his trains down the length of track, then pushes them backward to the beginning. I'm sure he'll be shocked on Christmas to discover that tracks can actually go in a circle so you don't have to push your trains backwards! Here he is, happily playing with his one long track.



Christian's train obsession extends beyond the wooden variety. In November the three of us joined Atticus and Alison and their two sons for a trip to see the trains at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. For the holidays, the garden runs an electric ride-on train around their big lawn. We took a ride on it and Christian thought it was fascinating. A funny thing about Christian is, the more interested he is in what's going on, the less he smiles. He just focuses hard and tries to take it all in. So on the entire ride, he was speechless and expressionless. Here is a photo of him enjoying the ride.



The garden also has a model train exhibit which Christian and Finnan enjoyed watching.





For more train excitement, Christian and I recently took the commuter train to David's office to meet him for lunch. It was Christian's first real train ride. (Real, as in the destination was somewhere other than where we started!) He had an absolute ball. Once he adjusted to the new surroundings, he insisted on sitting on his own seat, not on my lap. He asked a thousand questions. (Ahdah? Ahdah? Ahdah?) He got especially excited when other trains passed by the windows. (AHDAH?! AHDAH?! AHDAH?! ) These commuter trains are usually silent because no one talks to each other, but on this day everyone could hear a little toddler voice screaming out his questions. I could see everyone smiling and laughing at his excitement and innocence. We plan to take many more train trips to David's office in the future.


Here is one last picture of our happy, train-loving boy.


3 comments:

  1. I meant to ask you about your MARTA trip -- I'm so glad he had such fun! And that is absolutely hilarious that he discovered his Christmas present. He's going to be SO excited to get the rest of the set!

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  2. That's so cute!! I love hearing about the things that make him unique; it sounds like he has such a distinct personality! :-) I'm all smiles at his obsession with trains.

    So VERY sorry to hear about all the illnesses though! That sounds incredibly draining. Eager to hear what you find out from the specialist.

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  3. That is precious. :) That's exciting about him getting more tracks for Christmas, too!

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