He plays in the dirt. I mean he sometimes would before... but I have a picture where he just got done playing in some mud in his bathing suit. Except he is completely sans clothing, still covered in mud, and hosing off his BATHING SUIT. That's what he was worried about. Dirt on his clothes. Because he sometimes reads this blog, I won't post the pic.
He also is playing sports. Well trying... he is blessed with his mother's coordination and being a few years behind kids that started sooner and then growing several inches recently. But he is playing wildly with other little boys, scraping his knees and coming home covered in pond yuck. He argues with his little brother instead of telling me the psychology behind why he thinks Noah is behaving the way he is.
The one part of summer that has always been a tried and true event for my little man-boy is Day Out with Thomas. Serious. Thomas the Train was the first genuine toy Joshua played with. Before that he would mostly just play in the sink with water and bowls and spoons and funnels and collanders. That's all he wanted to do. And he would do it for hours.
But then came trains.When Joshua was 2, I saw him laying on the floor with a Thomas engine someone had given him and he had some blocks lined up behind it. After I took a picture of proof that my son COULD play with toys, I packed us all up to go get more engines at Target. Immediately. He wanted to play!
And then when we found out a REAL Thomas would come into town... HOLY COW. We were all over it at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI. And when we moved to Washington- HOLY COW. Thomas comes here too at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, WA. The summer Jill was visiting was actually Thomas weekend. She came on the ride- and held Noah who was monsterously beside himself with the crowd. I had forgotten how anti-crowd he was at that stage in his life. Oops.
But this year... Joshua was 7 and Noah was 4, ages that are dangerously on the bubble of not loving things that have always been loved. We got out of the car when we pulled into Snoqualmie with a parking spot so prime the train station and the lines and the crowd were all within sight as soon as we pulled in. The boys jumped out of the car with their train engineer hats on and we started walk-run-skip-walking over to the station when Joshua not only slowed up, but he handed me his hat and asked me to put it in my purse.
He spent the rest of the Day Out with Thomas feeling a little out of place and notably sad that Thomas isn't what he use to be. Noah was happy- but Noah loves this stuff. It could have been a Hello Kitty conference and the kid would have been ecstatic.
Joshua pulled his hat on for a quick picture with Thomas and his brother- and as a mom I'm grateful. But how very sad that my little man boy has officially entered the big boy world where Thomas the Train is a has-been.
It stinks that they grow up.
-Sheryl
P.S. Jill isn't dead by the way. She finally emailed with some weird claim about technology failure after some bad storms.
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