Day Out with Thomas

Yesterday (March 28) all four of us went to Grapevine to an event called Day Out with Thomas. Liam has been OBSESSED with Thomas and his friends since last summer. Thomas only comes around once a year, so we had to wait until now for Liam to see his favorite train in person.

Trying to do anything fun with Liam these days is hit or miss. The likelihood of a meltdown that ruins the day is usually pretty high. We knew we couldn't pass up this opportunity, though, and decided the risk was worth it. We went on a Friday afternoon on purpose. That way it wouldn't be as crowded and the kids would mostly be preschool age since school would be in at the time. Our assumptions were correct, and a chance of rain made for a very sparse crowd.

We got to downtown Grapevine and parked within walking distance of the event. (I bet it's much crazier today on the weekend.) The event is set up like a small Thomas-themed fair. There was a tent with train tables for playing, an entertainer making balloon animals and singing, a large model train set up for viewing, a couple of fair food stands (think funnel cake and corn dogs), a petting zoo, and a small train ride. There was also a blacksmith working, but I think that is part of the vintage feel of the Grapevine rail depot and always there. Of course, there was also the full-sized train ride with Thomas at the front and a chance for kids to meet and have their picture taken with Sir Topham Hatt, the controller of the railway on the island of Sodor.

Walking up to the depot, we could see Thomas from across the street. Liam's eyes lit up and the huge smile on his face while he exclaimed, "It's Thomas!" was worth it all. He was seriously very happy to see Thomas.

Once we were in the event, the first place we went was the tent with lots of train tables set up. Real estate was valuable in this place and the toy trains were pretty much all taken. It was difficult for Liam to find a train to play with and a spot he was happy with. It was full of toddlers and preschoolers who haven't learned how to suppress the urge to grab something out of someone's hand if they see something they want. So Liam had trains taken right out of his hand twice (by the same girl!), and both times resulted in Liam screaming and running out of the tent crying. He has just recently started an extremely bad habit of running away if he gets upset, which is not good at all in a public situation. Will caught him and calmed him down, and Liam still wanted to play. Thankfully, he did find a couple of trains to play with that were not taken from him. The situation made me tense. Little kids are so grabby! Liam was definitely not the only kid having a tough time in there.

We finally convinced him to move on out of that tent, so we looked at the model train for a few minutes. Of course Liam was upset that he couldn't touch it. Pretty soon after that, it was time to get in line for our ride on the big train. Once we found our seats in the vintage coach, Liam started getting super squirmy. The only way to keep him seated was to give him snacks. I'm not sure if snacks were allowed, but they didn't tell us they weren't! Finally the train started moving down the track...slowly. The train ride goes about 10 minutes down the line and then goes back to the station. So you end up sitting backwards for half the ride. There wasn't much to look at on the ride: mainly just trees without leaves, some houses, and you can see the Gaylord Texan and Great Wolf Lodge off in the distance. Pretty underwhelming, but we were riding on Thomas! Unfortunately, I don't think Liam was impressed at all by it.

After the train ride, we walked over to get a closer look at Thomas. There was a line where you could get an "official" picture taken with Thomas, but we opted for just looking on from the side. Liam did not want his picture taken at that point. There were also some large pictures of trains set up, and I tried to get Liam to take a picture in front of one of them, but he wasn't into it. I think I got one of him just kicking the dirt in front of it. We then walked down to see Sir Topham Hatt. Liam and Will took a picture with him and Liam got a sticker. After that, we all took a ride on the little train set up on a grassy area, and looked at the petting zoo. We opted to not let Liam go in with the animals. Maybe next year!

The last thing for us to do there was visit the Thomas gift shop. They had Thomas everything! Liam immediately started grabbing items like he was on a Nickelodeon Super Toy Run in 1992. We reeled him back in and Will held him while we looked around. We ended up getting a 2 DVD set that came with two rare wooden trains for a great deal. We also got him a Day Out with Thomas freight car, but it's a 2012 model so it was really cheap!

All in all, we had a fun time at Day Out with Thomas. There was minimal whining and complaining from Liam, but he wasn't really enthusiastic about it all either (except for the first sighting of Thomas and all the merch!). It was still worth going. If Liam is still into Thomas next year, we may very well go again. I'd say we could skip the real train ride (which isn't cheap) and just go to the event (which is free), but I'm sure once we got there, he would insist on riding the train! I'm marking this one in the success column.

Right after the awesome reaction to his first sight of Thomas

Cranky the Crane in block form

Waiting in line for the train

Family photo taken by "The Conductor"

Not wanting to take a picture with Thomas

Not wanting to have his picture taken here

Literally kicking the dirt

Sir Topham Hatt

Riding the little train

Let's Talk About Liam

The blog has obviously veered away from being Liam-centric in the past few months. The pregnancy was so emotionally and physically exhausting that any attempts to write an update about Liam just were not seen through. Liam has been here the whole time, though, growing and getting smarter every day.

As of today, Liam is 34 months old. In two short months he will be three years old. WOW! He's having a Thomas the Train party because the little dude is still obsessed with those trains.

Some words I would use to describe Liam at this stage are:
Smart
Stubborn
Charming
Particular
Entertaining

Smart: We definitely have a little smarty on our hands. He learned the alphabet (both upper and lowercase) many months ago. He's been counting to 20 for many months as well although he still usually skips 15. These days, we get asked 100 times a day what a word starts with or how a word is spelled. He usually already knows the answer for what a word starts with. He knows the letter sounds already. He can spell his name (good thing it's short), knows his full name, and recognize some words by sight. If, for example, you tell him a word starts with G, he will say, "Just like____(another word that starts with G)." So letters and words are his big thing right now for sure. I think he will be an early reader.

Liam got his first non-peg puzzle around Christmas. It was a 24-piece Thomas the Train puzzle. He put it right together in 10 minutes. Since then, he's put together lots of puzzles, with the biggest ones being 35-piece puzzles. If we weren't so tired of picking up tons of puzzle pieces off the floor, we'd let him move on to bigger ones!

He recently started learning the months of the year. He can tell you what months all four of us were born in and recognizes many of the month names by sight. His memory is too good. If you tell him you might do something tomorrow, he will ask you about it right when he wakes up the next day. He always speaks in sentences now. It's not always perfect, but you always know what he's saying. He's starting to pick up phrases he hears and use them, even if not correctly all the time. He loves to say, "Guess what?" but he really doesn't have any follow up to it! He also likes to say, "That's fine." He really says a lot of funny (to us) things these days and I usually don't write them down. I did write down a few in the fall, though:

October 23: Mama: Liam, Where are we going? Liam: To the bakery. For pancakes! For a party!
(Said while sitting in the driver's seat of the car while it was in the driveway.)

October 24: Excuse me. Paper please.

October 25: (Knock on the door.) It's Gibson!

October 29: I'm a dinosaur! I'm a kangaroo!

November 8: He left a toy car named Boomer in the yard. As we were going inside, he said. "Bye bye Goomer. See ya later!"

November 11: Laying his head on my belly: Hi Gibson! You in there?

November 12: I asked Liam who he wanted to pray for: "Jingle Bells...and animals."

November 26: I told him we need to clean his room. He punched the air and said, "Let's Do it!"

November/December: "Don't scares him!" when he doesn't want you to mess with something like a toy

Some of these now seem like no big deal, but at the time I obviously thought they were significant enough to write down. I will try to do better at writing them down from now on.

Stubborn: Goodness, he really is stubborn. If it's not his idea or something he wants to do, he will not do it...at least not without kicking and a good amount of screaming. Especially since Gibson has been born, Liam has become a screamer when he gets told "No" or doesn't get his way about something. He's really good at making his displeasure known.

Charming: This is usually the case around people other than us! Thankfully, Liam keeps his screaming limited to us and is typically nice and friendly to other people. Most of the kids he hangs out with just happen to be girls, and he loves to spend time with them. He talks about them and asks to see them. If you ask him who his friends are, he rattles off the names of several girls. It's cute. However, last week we saw our 8 year old neighbor while out on a walk. Liam has played with her and her sister a few times. They think of him as a cute baby! Anyway, he walked right up to her and said, "Can I have a kiss?" I was kind of dismayed, but we all just laughed. We've never told him to do that or that it's ok to do that. I've asked him for kisses before, but I'm his mother! I guess it's cute now, but it won't be in a couple of years! He only got a handshake, by the way.

Particular: Liam always has an idea of how he wants things to be or how it wants things to be done. He wants a specific snack or a specific toy, and there might be screaming if what he wants isn't available or won't be given to him for whatever reason. He doesn't have OCD tendencies at all. He's definitely not neat; messes are his true forte. I called it particular, but it really leans more toward bossiness. He's quick to tell us where we can sit on the couch or not to mess with his toys. He's a man who knows what he wants, for sure. I can see him bossing around Gibson one day, unfortunately. This is how he is at home, but I'm not sure if he's this way around other kids at church. I've never been told he was bossing kids around, but that doesn't mean he's not doing it!

Entertaining: Having a conversation with him is entertaining because you just never know what he's going to say. We get a lot of laughs out of phrases he says or words he makes up. His imagination is huge, and I like to watch him play with his trains making up stories for them. He loves to pretend and gets so excited about things like parties that will happen in the future. This year, he's aware he has a birthday coming and he finally knows what that means and that there will be a party. It's entertaining to watch him figure stuff out and learn about new things. He "loves" everything, or so he says. He's got a lot of energy and uses it to either be entertaining or annoying, ha! He's very loud, or at least I just noticed how loud he was since we've had a newborn in the house! Liam is always worth watching, if not for the entertainment factor, then for the "We might have to stop him from doing something crazy" factor. To say he keeps us on our toes would be an understatement.

These days, Liam is adjusting to life as a big brother. It has been hard on him. He can't really be trusted around Gibson yet because he would get pretty rough with him. Telling Liam the word "no" just makes him want to do something even more...and he will try to do it fast if he's thinks you're about to stop him. He's been a challenge the past 7 weeks. On more than one occasion, he has said that he wants to throw Gibson away in the trash can. I don't think he really means it, but no longer being the center of attention is hard on a two year old. He frustrates me on a daily basis and has gotten to be fairly disobedient sometimes. It's hard! Liam is obviously still very much loved by us, but I can't give him the massive amounts of attention he wants and needs since Gibson has decided he needs to be attached to me 24/7. We are learning how to be a family of four together!

Some pictures of Liam from the past few months: