Train Mania.

The master and his creation

He's really outdone himself this time. His toy-making skills are evolving into epic proportions now. I'm not talking milk jugs or even box forts here, people. This is the 'big time'. Chris created a TRAIN BOARD for Ezra. As in, the only kind of toy that entertains Ezra's busy little fingers for more than 30 seconds so mommy can read a page of her book kind of a toy. The most glorious toy ever made.

We haven't officially presented the train to Ezra yet... Chris has been working on it in the garage at night after Ezra goes to bed. Tonight we're going to glue all the track down. Once this thing is finished, I have a feeling we might never need to leave the house again.

Allow me to explain. Lately, my life REVOLVES around toy train sets. It seems I never go anywhere anymore unless I know for certain that there will be a train set there waiting for me on the other side. The bookstores I go to have one. The library I go to has one. The stores I shop at have one. Now, I just need to convince the grocery store down the street to get one, and I'll be set for life. It's all Ezra wants to do. EVER.



When we get home, he runs up to the shelf and grabs his 'Thomas the Tank Engine' DVD off the shelf and greedily starts trying to push it into the VCR slot. ("No, no, no, Ezra. That's a D-V-D. Not a V-H-S!", I tell him emphatically. When the other kids are reciting their ABC's, Ezra will be chanting D-V-D-V-H-S! D-V-D-V-H-S! and all the other mommies will know that my son watches too many movies.)

If we're not WATCHING Thomas or playing with Thomas, we're pointing to Thomas on our shoe or rolling our Thomas toy off the back deck over and over and over again. If I have to watch that DVD one more time where Thomas and Friends fight over who gets to pull the coach of the Queen of England, I'm going to go bonkers. I can handle George Carlin's voice for only so long... But he's the voice of every train and every person on that whole flippin show, and in my book, that's just a little TOO MUCH George Carlin.

Anywho, trains are IN and everything else is just white noise in the world of Ezra James. Oh! But in the midst of this crazy train craze, Ezra has managed to (finally!) learn another word. The word is BUBBLE. I was watching all the kids in the church nursery last Sunday, and I pulled out the bubbles (because the little ones LOVE the bubbles), and I was blowing bubbles and I kept hearing one of the little kids saying "BUH-BUL!" "BUH-BUL!" like he was stuck on repeat and when I looked down to see who it was, it was EZRA! woo woo! I was so proud. I've been running around making bubbles everyday since then using soapy water and WHATEVER I can find laying around with holes in it (the spatula works well, and so does my apple slicer)-- just so I can hear him say the word again and again. It's so cute!



The only other word Ezra really says is "Ball". And he sortof says "Bath", but "bath" sounds a heck-of-a-lot like "Ball". I'm ready for him to learn some new words. Like, maybe:

"Please may I have some more juice?", or

"Why don't you sit down here and put up your feet for awhile, Mom?", or

"You look tired. Why don't you go take a nice hot BUH-BUL BALLL?"

hehe.