Tuesday - Rabbits and Trains
Apr. 10th, 2007 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreI survived another Easter. My son seemed to enjoy hunting eggs, which is good since I had to wake up early on Easter morning to color them. I'd been meaning to for a couple of days before, but never found the time until that last moment arrived. I decided that having a 2-and-a-half year old "help" would be more than I could handle and would result in a multi-colored mess, so this years I'll let him believe a rabbit brought them already decorated and leave at that.
Last year, at 1-and-a-half, he would point to the eggs but didn't want to pick them up and put the basket. This year, he enjoyed finding them hiding in flower pots and under the leaves of shrubs, and he especially enjoyed picking them up and tossing them with great force into his basket. We eventually convinced him to set them down gently in the basket, but there were a few cracked shells before that lesson sunk in.
More wonderful than the egg hunt was the gift-filled Easter basket before it. His little plastic eggs had a lot of small cast metal cars in them, which he loved. His basket also had a Thomas the Tank Engine toy in it. Thomas is a recent discovery for him, and he is enamored with that little blue train. He loves everything about him except for his name.
He refuses to call him "Thomas," because he knows a boy named Thomas from his daycare that he doesn't like very much. Thomas from the daycare is a big, slack-jawed toddler who constantly wears a bib because he still drools. In another 14 years he will probably be the starting linebacker for our local high school varsity football team, as he's already built like a miniature linebacker. He's not especially sharp, but he's extra aggressive. These traits will serve him well as a future jock. My son still has a scar on his ribcage where he and Thomas got in a fight over a toy and Thomas bit him hard enough through my son's shirt to draw blood. I'm sure my son has bitten Thomas in the past just like he bit all of his other classmates, but for some reason there is still bad blood between these two.
Because he doesn't like Thomas the Toddler, my son refers to Thomas the Tank Engine as "my choo-choo." We have toys and story books with the likeness of this unfortunately-named blue train on them. My son loves them all, but he avoids speaking the awful name of that otherwise delighful train.
He will walk up to me, hand me a book and announce, "I read my choo-choo book," which means that me wants me to read his choo-choo book to him. Since he technically can't read yet, I guess that to his mind using my reading skills to speak the words aloud to him counts as him reading.
One time I had to read a Thomas and Friends book three times in a row. I guess it's just that good of a book. It is one of those books where the child pulls open a flap to see what's behind it. You open a gate to see Bertie the Bus ("I'm waiting for Thomas to pass by!") or pull aside a cloud to see Harold the Helicopter ("I like flying in the sky!"). It doesn't have much of a plot. My son isn't into plots. He like bright pictures of machines that roll, fly, chug, vroom, and the like. Plots are for pussies; the best books have flaps that allow him to participate in the stories he can't yet read. But even in a story without plot, the characters need to have names. Calling the tank engine "choo-choo" is like calling a cat "meow-meow" or a dog "arf-arf." It's not a name, it's a description of a sound. My son's choo-choo should be called something better.
Perhaps I could convince the makers of these books, videos and toys to change the name of this plucky little tank engine, but I doubt they will. Too many children already know him as Thomas and like him that way. It would be easier to change the name of the future football player, who hasn't been around near as long and is known by a lot fewer people. Maybe his parents would consent to naming him Bernard (the biter) or Derek (the drooler). I don't care what they call him, so long as it isn't Thomas.
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Last year, at 1-and-a-half, he would point to the eggs but didn't want to pick them up and put the basket. This year, he enjoyed finding them hiding in flower pots and under the leaves of shrubs, and he especially enjoyed picking them up and tossing them with great force into his basket. We eventually convinced him to set them down gently in the basket, but there were a few cracked shells before that lesson sunk in.
More wonderful than the egg hunt was the gift-filled Easter basket before it. His little plastic eggs had a lot of small cast metal cars in them, which he loved. His basket also had a Thomas the Tank Engine toy in it. Thomas is a recent discovery for him, and he is enamored with that little blue train. He loves everything about him except for his name.
He refuses to call him "Thomas," because he knows a boy named Thomas from his daycare that he doesn't like very much. Thomas from the daycare is a big, slack-jawed toddler who constantly wears a bib because he still drools. In another 14 years he will probably be the starting linebacker for our local high school varsity football team, as he's already built like a miniature linebacker. He's not especially sharp, but he's extra aggressive. These traits will serve him well as a future jock. My son still has a scar on his ribcage where he and Thomas got in a fight over a toy and Thomas bit him hard enough through my son's shirt to draw blood. I'm sure my son has bitten Thomas in the past just like he bit all of his other classmates, but for some reason there is still bad blood between these two.
Because he doesn't like Thomas the Toddler, my son refers to Thomas the Tank Engine as "my choo-choo." We have toys and story books with the likeness of this unfortunately-named blue train on them. My son loves them all, but he avoids speaking the awful name of that otherwise delighful train.
He will walk up to me, hand me a book and announce, "I read my choo-choo book," which means that me wants me to read his choo-choo book to him. Since he technically can't read yet, I guess that to his mind using my reading skills to speak the words aloud to him counts as him reading.
One time I had to read a Thomas and Friends book three times in a row. I guess it's just that good of a book. It is one of those books where the child pulls open a flap to see what's behind it. You open a gate to see Bertie the Bus ("I'm waiting for Thomas to pass by!") or pull aside a cloud to see Harold the Helicopter ("I like flying in the sky!"). It doesn't have much of a plot. My son isn't into plots. He like bright pictures of machines that roll, fly, chug, vroom, and the like. Plots are for pussies; the best books have flaps that allow him to participate in the stories he can't yet read. But even in a story without plot, the characters need to have names. Calling the tank engine "choo-choo" is like calling a cat "meow-meow" or a dog "arf-arf." It's not a name, it's a description of a sound. My son's choo-choo should be called something better.
Perhaps I could convince the makers of these books, videos and toys to change the name of this plucky little tank engine, but I doubt they will. Too many children already know him as Thomas and like him that way. It would be easier to change the name of the future football player, who hasn't been around near as long and is known by a lot fewer people. Maybe his parents would consent to naming him Bernard (the biter) or Derek (the drooler). I don't care what they call him, so long as it isn't Thomas.
