My Little Conductor

I've mentioned a few times that Micah's new obsession is with trains.  He is seriously all about trains right now.  Every morning the first thing he does is go to his box of trains and ask us to put together his track.  He usually sleeps with two or three of his trains.  When he was sick playing with his trains is the only thing he did that didn't involve laying on the couch and watching TV.  Whenever we come up to a railroad crossing he gets super excited about "going over the tracks" and seeing "the ding-dings."  He has a sixth sense when it comes to hearing a train whistle and he names every train he sees.  "That's Thomas."  "Here comes Percy."  "It's Gordon!"  The only time he gets possessive and mad at other kids is when they're messing with "his" trains (whether they are actually his or not).  What can I say?  The boy loves his trains.

Brad and I have been wanting to take him for a ride on a train for a while.  We actually planned to a couple times, but someone kept getting sick, preventing us from going.  We had some reservations, too.  Even though Micah loves trains he's scared of them.  He won't go near the real life ones at the Museum of Science and Industry.  Whenever we drive by the boxcar in town Micah reminds us that the train "doesn't move" because we always have to assure him that it won't move.  We weren't sure how he would actually do getting on a train.

But we decided to try it out anyway.




Today we took the train to the Children's Museum.  It was a short ride--just five stops, but just enough time that if he was really freaking out we wouldn't have to suffer too long.  And there would be something fun to do when we got off the train.  Micah did great.  He was super excited the whole way there.  When he heard the train coming he started to get really scared and told us he didn't want to get on the train yet.  But we got on anyway.  And within 30 seconds he was good.  He was in awe!  He loved being on the tracks and looking out the window.  He kept telling us we were "puffing."  He anticipated every tunnel and bridge.  He said hi to the conductor (and showed him his conductor's hat that he was so proud to wear) and just kept looking around at everything. 

It was a perfect trip.  It was so much fun to see how much he enjoyed being on the train.  I loved watching his excitement build as we were driving to the station.  He kept telling us he was wearing his conductor's hat and asking if we were going to ride the train.  Today was one of those days you look forward to even before you have kids.  It was a good day.