The Trials & Tribulations of the Choo Choo Train

Model trains are good fun. I used to enjoy building them when I was a little person and watching the miniature trains running around the track in our loft, with that lovely smell of diesel wafting up. The only downside from memory was that lofts are generally full of junk and spiders, hotter than hell in the summer and colder than the North Pole in winter.

Our little one also enjoys his trains. Both the real ones and his little wooden one that we bought from Ikea a few months ago. Annoyingly though he seems to enjoy pulling bits apart instead of just marvelling in the wonder of the wooden goodness. And that, dear reader (s) frustrates the hell out of me!!

I can live with him building random patterns with the track, even though the ends don’t meet up and it goes under the dining room chairs. I’m pretty relaxed with it randomly ending up behind the patio door curtains or crashing into a wall. After all, there is no order in nature.

But, oh my, when the track is neatly and painstakingly built with joined-up ends, flowing sections of straights and curves, breathtaking bridges and undulating bends by the mystery train track laying fairy, and the little one then decides to dig bits of beautiful track up with a kitchen spatula – then my stress levels begin to rise!

‘Maybe leave the bridge where it is, Josh?’

‘How about we pop that bit of track back where it was, son?’

‘Let’s just play with the train on the track, Josh, rather than trashing it again!!’

In the end I watch through my fingers as the bridges are spatula-dug up, rendering the daily lives of the wooden passengers into complete turmoil as they can’t reach the homes of their wooden families. Wooden babies are left without cuddles and wooden dinners are left to get cold. The whole wooden world falls to its knees purely because of Joshua’s desire to spatula the hell out of his expertly and mysteriously constructed diesel wonderland.

Hopefully the wooden people on their wooden trains will eventually learn to forgive him. Whether I can be so magnanimous only time will tell…

 

This post was first published on A Life Just Ordinary. For more from James visit his blog!