The Long Short Weekend

Saturday morning we hit the road with Grammie for a trip to Green Bay, with the National Railroad Museum being the ultimate destination. The Day Out With Thomas tour was in town, and there was no way we were going to let that go by without taking Peter there.

 

Now, it has been “unseasonably cool” here in Southeastern Wisconsin for the past 3 or 4 weeks. (When the high temperature in June is something like 15 degrees below average the weather people will say “unseasonably cool.” In December, they call it a cold snap or something like that. Can we call it a cold wave if we would call 15 degrees above average a heat wave?) The weather in Green Bay was as close to perfect as you could get, temperatures in the low-to-mid 70s, pleasant breezes, sunny. There were a bunch of cottonwood trees around the museum grounds, though, so there we seed puffs floating around most of the time, too. It was your typical Green Bay snow shower, but with a different kind of snow.

 

We got there about an hour and a half before the scheduled ride on the train. And might I add that parking was free? Chicago, you could learn something from that. Seriously. Anyhow, we got there about 10:45 or so, maybe 11:00 by the time we were actually inside the grounds. Peter was delighted, to say the least. Besides the life-sized Thomas taking people for trips around the museum, there were a bunch of retired engines and passenger cars. And of course a gift shop, which was the first thing Peter ran to. After getting him out of the gift shop tent, we took him to see the big engines.  He liked that, but at the same time they were gigantic, black, dirty things that didn’t bring to mind the colorful happy engines one would find on the Island of Sodor, so he was a little intimidated, too.

 

There was also a wooden observation tower on the grounds, and I carried Peter all the way to the top, about 50 feet up. Once at the top we waved for Mommy and Grammie, and then Peter headed right back to the stairs, which was just as well.

 

Soon enough we were in line for the train ride with Thomas. We waited about 20 minutes in line, and if we had gotten to the line about a minute earlier we could have fit into the open-air car. Instead we sat in the 1917 passenger coach named Josephine, which I think turned out better than being on the open air car. Especially when the fluff from the trees really started clogging up the air. Peter liked the train ride, and he also liked the kettle corn that he was munching on for most of the trip. He was very well behaved, unlike some of the other kids there, and really soaked in the experience of the ride. He probably could have stayed on the train all afternoon, but he understood when it was time to get off.

 

After the ride we went inside the museum building for the first time. Peter liked the models running on the tracks. Making our way to the back of the building we found Sir Topham Hatt, and Peter got in line with Mommy to get his picture taken. When it came time for the little boy in front of Peter to go up to Hatty he decided it wasn’t really a good idea, and cried up a little storm. Not Peter.  He went up there with Mom and posed like it was no problem. Once that was done he took off like a shot to go see the set-up of model trains with Thomas, Percy, Gordon, James, Toby, and pretty much every engine in the Thomas universe.  He checked them out for a while and then he agreed with the rest of us that it was a good time to get something to eat.

 

We went to a restaurant a few blocks away and dined well.  Peter enjoyed drinking a lot of Mommy’s root beer, and also liked dipping his fries in the tartar sauce that came with his fish fry. He ignored the fish for the most part, but then he did drink a lot of the root beer when we told him it could give him a belly ache. We were sitting outside at lunch, and next to the restaurant was a private marina. When we were done Peter wanted to see the boats (which he calls “dips” for some reason we aren’t sure of). After we saw the boats we loaded him into the car and took off for the amusement park at Bay Beach. But within about 2 minutes Peter was passed out in his seat. It was around 4:00 at that time, so we decided the park could wait for another visit. Peter slept in the car for about an hour before waking up in time for me to pull into a McDonalds on the drive back so I could inject some caffeine into me. Peter ordered a 49¢ cone.

 

After we got back home Grammie was packing up to leave. When Peter saw her pulling out of the driveway he got very upset, so I brought him inside and we watched some Thomas DVDs to take his mind off things and decompress.

 

Sunday (yesterday) wound up being another beautiful day, and Peter was outside playing with the kids next door from about 11:00 AM to 4:30 in the afternoon. Inflatable pools were inflated and splashed in while parents did yard work. Again, Peter lit the candles from both ends and played harder than anyone. After we brought him in he went down for a nap, but he slept for maybe 45 minutes before getting up. After he got up he just sat on the sofa with us and chilled out with his blanket.

 

So it was another action-packed weekend for Peter, and come Monday morning we needed heavy duty machinery to get him out of bed. He seems to know that other kids are on summer vacation, so he’s got that sleeping-in mentality.  I would have liked that this morning…

 

Long time, no post

Peter is 2 now. Pictures of his birthday will be posted “soon.”

 

Anyway, Peter is making great strides in his development lately. He is showing a lot more maturity (relatively) these days, and is in the midst of the full-fledged verbal explosion.

 

We took him to get his hair cut on Saturday, and the times we’ve done that before have been less than pleasurable.  Each time there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Not this time. He sat patiently and munched on fruit snacks. He didn’t fidget much, and his eyes stayed dry the whole time. He was calm like that when we took him to the doctor’s office last month, too, so it’s not like it was just a one time event.

 

He went to church Sunday morning surrounded by a large number of other kids, and he sat quietly or played by himself for the bulk of the mass. The past several months had seen him being quite the handful in situations like that, but not this time.

 

He’s also saying new words every day now. This morning he said “blueberries.” He’s even constructed some basic sentences like “hit the ball.” He’s doing a lot of parroting. Yesterday his mom said something was fast, and then he said “fast” a bunch of times.  He hasn’t mastered all the sounds of spoken English yet, but he’s working on it. He still says “fra fra” but he will also say “choo choo” and a recognizable version of “railroad.”

 

Another sign of the new maturity is the honesty, or at least self-awareness he displays. He never would admit to being tired before, but now when I ask him if he’s tired he’ll actually think about it and admit “yeah,” he is tired when he is. Does he maybe want a nap? “…….yeah.”

 

I wouldn’t mind a nap…