TRAINS!

If the boys have an obsession, it would be trains. They love "choo choos" and they play with their trains sets all day and their favorite books are train books. Fair warning - if you come over to see the boys, you will likely read Freight Train (by Donald Crews - it's in my head, I don't even have to refer to the book because I read it so often) several times.

I love how Ben lays down to drive his "choo choos" around the tracks, and I love the look of concentration they get as they move their trains around. I don't love putting train tracks together a gazillion times a day, but that is the price I am willing to pay for their joy, I guess. We laughed with Luke & Sami about the recommended age range (I think it's 3), but I have come to appreciate and better understand that recommended age range. The boys can more easily put together the wooden train set than their electric train set, but they still struggle with the wooden bridge, and it comes apart easily. I also don't love how they both prefer the electric train that came with the set and is incidentally not available for individual purchase. It has caused many a tear, and I have heard "MY choo choo" more times than I care to count. But what can you do? (except hide that choo choo as soon as they go to bed and pretend you don't know where it is?) So we play trains a good portion of the day and it's pretty cute. Sometimes they even let the dinosaurs stomp around the tracks, so I imagine they are acting out "Dinosaur Train," their favorite PBS children's programming :)

This is our new activity table, and since we don't have room for a train table too, I'm making it double as a train table. I hadn't thought about it needing edges, and at first the tracks would just slide right off when the boys would push on it, so I added this rubber lining beneath it and voila! Hah! And J said it couldn't be done. Resourceful and (somewhat, okay, not really) thrifty mama.

 

Finally, we went to a train show in Plano with J's mom (Richard was sick, which is sad because it was his idea!) and grandparents. The boys loved looking at all the model trains! There was even a little train ride in the back, which of course we rode and they had a fun time. The boys were sad when their train hand stamps finally washed away :)