Nick got a new train set from his grandpa. It's just like the train tables he loves at the bookstore, except more elaborate than any one I've ever seen. We're at least 8 hours of assembly into this setup, and there are many more pieces still requiring hardware to put together. He sleeps with 'chugga-chugga choo-choo trains', one engine in each hand. He falls asleep at night on the floor in his room, playing with trains. (Don't let his mother lift him back into bed, with appendages flopping everywhere.) One night he rolled under the bed asleep, and we thought we lost him!We took Nick to breakfast with us one Saturday morning, and as usual, he wants to drink from whatever glass is in front of someone else. He will gravitate towards my 'Arnold Palmer' usually (unsweetened iced tea and lemonade). After taking over my glass, he spilled it when I turned my head, of course. He yelled, 'I spilled my coffee!'
Our shared joy of the summer has been 'the white car' which he requests for every ride. We take it out on the weekend evenings for a cruise, and his car seat fits in the back seat nicely. With the tops out, he loves the breeze in his face. I figured, with no food back there, he can't hurt the car, right? Well, the ceiling padding deteriorates in those old cars, and now I have the little handprint of a 3-year old over the back window in the roof. It's a nice complement to the rip in the pinstripe his mother added during our first month of dating almost 15 years ago.
And a special thanks to the Wolverines for giving Nick five opportunities to yell, 'Touchdown!' in the first week of the season. Now mama has two guys yelling at the TV on Saturdays. (And thanks to the Lions, we don't yell at the TV on Sundays, too.)
I traveled for 9 days this month, and Nick was speaking in complete sentences when I returned. He's still enamored with trains and planes, but now we've advanced to steam trains, locomotives, F-16s and Blue Angels. We need to find him some video longer than 4 minute clips online, to give his mother time for a break once in awhile. While at the computer this morning, he lifted an old plaque from my home office desk that I had at Lincoln Mercury over 10 years ago. The Mercury logo 'flying M' is on it. He pick it up and said, "Grandpa Earl's car!" Now, Grandpa Earl has a 1993 or so Grand Marquis, which Nick probably last played in a year ago (the end of that fun came when he filled the cassette deck with loose change from the ash tray), and no one ever associated the badge on that car with the logo on this plaque. Think kids don't pick up everything, and marketing doesn't work?
He got one more swim in before we closed the pool this weekend. The water was about 70 degrees (lake temperature, but too cold for us old folks) and he didn't balk for a second. He jumped right in, and we had to pull him out bordering on purple and shivering.
The other pics from this month are a trip to the zoo with Mason Poley, and finger painting. Also, the tub pic is with his cousin Thatcher when we were in Atlanta for Labor Day.
Click here for 33rd month pictures.
- Jason
