"A Crack in the Track"

So my little Will adores Thomas the Tank Engine and trains in general. For Christmas, we got him the Imaginarium train table for all of his Thomas engines. It is just as great as the official Thomas stuff, but about a third of the price. Anyway, Will has really enjoyed this train table and he plays with it on a daily basis.

However, he also has a little Thomas board book titled, "A Crack in the Track." It is basically a little book about a hail storm that comes and makes a crack in the track. The trains can't go anywhere until this crack is fixed, which it is by the end of the book. For some reason, Will LOVES this book. I am thankful for this book for many reasons. The main reason, however, is that it has made Will not fear thunder stoms. When he hears thunder, he just says a line from the book, "The sky grew dark, thunder rumbled." I am very grateful for this because thunder storms do not = sleepless nights here.

There is a bad side to this book though. Will now feels that he needs to make cracks in the track on his train table. It was cute the first time. He came walking in the living room telling me, "There's a cwack in the twack." Not knowing exactly what he was talking about, I followed him to his room to see his track disassembled and lying from one end of his room to the other. I giggled to myself and decided to play along with him, so I happily got the track map out and started to put it back together. In the book, the "breakdown crew came and sang while they worked" so being the super mom I am (HA), I happily started reassembling the track while I sang an impromtu song. Forty-five minutes later, it wasn't so cute and  I was no longer singing a happy tune.I had to sort through all of the pieces, determine which were A's, B's, C's, etc..., then try to follow the map to reassemble the track. Saying that it was a pain to put back together is a gross understatement! I was SO frustrated!

Well, since that first day, I have assembled that track about 10 times. I actually no longer need the map because I have learned what pieces go where. We have a "cwack in the twack" about twice a week. I have actually already repaired the track today and I will probably have to do it again sometime this weekend. Daniel has no patience for these types of tedious chores so I am the lucky one who gets to deal with it.

So, I guess I will be doing this until Engineer Will tires of doing destroying the tracks or I get frustrated and put them up for awhile. Being the softy I am, I think I will be fixing the "cwacks in the twacks" for some time because I cannot bear to break his heart and take his trains away when I was the one who introduced him to the book in the first place.

Kids, you gotta love 'em!