Trains, Trucks, Trains, Trucks....

My son is obssessed with trains, trucks, heavy equipment, etc. Now I know he is a boy and that is pretty commonplace. Especially since he isn't quite 3 yet. However, not being 3 yet his attention span is still all over the place, except when it comes to trains and trucks. Let me elaborate a little. Yesterday we went to the zoo and Fairytale Town. He enjoyed the zoo, saw the animals but kind of ran from exhibit to exhibit. Much as I expected. We then headed to Fairytale Town, which is basically like storybook tales that you can play in, on, and interact with. If you ask him what his favorite part of the entire day was the only thing he talks about is the metal train at Fairytale Town that he was able to get in and play on. We had a whole park of slides, mazes, and bridges, etc to play on and he only remembers the train when you ask him what we did. This morning we headed off of to a local Memorial Day parade and I gave him a digital web camera we have to take his own pictures. He loved the fire trucks in the parade but do you know what excited him the most? The garbage trucks that drove by on the other side of the street in the regular traffic. He took pictures and talked about it for the rest of the day! He seems so single minded in his large truck and train pursuit. He also LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine. Now I know many children his age are also in love with Thomas but my son tries to bargain with me to get him new trains. Now I suppose that isn't too unusual except that he is only 2! He collects the die cast Thomas that can only be found locally at Target. He knows which store is Target and as soon as we hit the parking lot he is in bargaining mode! He must have more than half the collection now plus many of the buildings that connect with the millions of miles of track. He would happily play with the trains everyday for hours on end if I let him. He is content to play all by himself without thought of food, drink, mommy or whatever. We recently bought tickets to the Day Out with Thomas event. It is a whole day of activities, games and of course a train ride pulled by a real life Thomas engine. We are making a weekend family trip of it and I can already hear the nonstop talk of the train ride. It will continue on at least through his birthday (which is the end of September!) and may even extend to Christmas. We also belong to a book club and for the last order I let my son go through the catalog to pick out which books he wanted to order. Guess what he picked.......of course, trucks and trains. He picked out a book called "I Stink" about a garbage truck. He picked out "Digger Man" about digger type machines and he also picked two board books, one of trucks and one of trains! This adds to a really long discussion at night about which book to read before bed. He has such a collection of train and truck books it takes almost 20 minutes to decide what to read! But I really can't complain. I am guilty of letting my son watch too much TV at such a young age but he will take his trains over TV anyday. For that I am grateful and hope that it stays that way as he gets older. I imagine it will be a phenomenon in our home for quiet a few years to come. Even longer perhaps since we have 2 boys and the youngest has yet to reach an age that such things interest him. I guess I will just enjoy his fascination with all things train and truck related for now because I know that all too soon his attention will turn towards other things like friends and girls. And when that happens I will remember with a smile my little big man who now loves girls but used to love trains, trucks and big machines..............