Chugga Chugga Choo Choo!

R's cousins G and Li'l T (and presumably Trucker, too!) LOVE trains. Actually, they love things with wheels that roll. R hasn't been all that enchanted with trains, trucks, cars, etc. although she does have her share of those toys too.

R still loves trains, though. A month or so ago we borrowed a Thomas video from the library, and it was a huge hit. She talked about all the trains endlessly, and recreated several of the events that occurred in the videos (for example, in one video, Rusty has to rescue a train--Henry? someone else?--who gets trapped on a bridge that breaks down; for that rescue he earns the name "Trusty Rusty." For days after she saw that, she wanted me to draw pictures of Trusty Rusty or just to tell her the story of Trusty Rusty).

She has one Thomas train, but she doesn't really play with it too much. Her favorite train-related activity is actually "taking a ride on the train." This involves sitting on the couch and calling it a train, or lining up our kitchen chairs and insisting that people sit on them as if they are riding a train. She learned to do this at day care, when they would line up all the chairs in the room, give the kids slips of paper for "tickets" and they'd all sit and ride the train together. When R does it at home, she puts a different stuffed animal on each chair, sometimes giving the stuffed animals their own stuffed animal or blanket, and then announces where the train is going: perhaps to the museum, or to the restaurant or the aquarium.

Here's a recent picture of R riding the train. She likes to sit there and say "chugga chugga choo choo!" while the train is going.At random points, she'll push buttons on the train to make it stop and get off, only to get right back on and go somewhere else.