I try to take at least one photo every day. These are some of my favorites—one per day—from the past week. (To see all the dailies from the year, check out the set on Flickr.)

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{this moment} - A Friday ritual inspired by SouleMama. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor, and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

At almost eight months, Ian popped his first tooth through a couple of days ago. We’re trying an amber teething necklace. No verdict yet on whether it works, but I think it’s adorable.

I try to take at least one photo every day. These are some of my favorites—one per day—from the past week. (To see all the dailies from the year, check out the set on Flickr.)

Gallery

{this moment} - A Friday ritual inspired by SouleMama. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor, and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

I’m really loving how Simon and Ian are learning about each other. They seem to be each other’s favorite people right now, which makes this mama’s heart do flipflops of joy. I’m hoping it’ll last a long, long time.

One of Simon’s love languages seems to gift giving—well, maybe not so much gift giving as piling things on. This morning I found him sharing his beloved train tracks by making a big heap of them next to/on top of his little brother.

In related news, Simon has recently learned to fit the pieces of track together to make his own configurations. I am so impressed with his new skill that I am tempted to go out and buy miles of wooden tracks. So far I’ve shown remarkable restraint, and of course he’s none the wiser.

I try to take at least one photo every day. These are some of my favorites—one per day—from the past week. (To see all the dailies from the year, check out the set on Flickr.)

Gallery

{this moment} - A Friday ritual inspired by SouleMama. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor, and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

Important disclaimer: I recognize that by poking fun at my husband’s fashion sense in this post I am exposing myself as a complete ingrate. He gets one or both of the boys dressed every morning, and I love him for it. It’s just that sometimes, well . . .

This morning we were headed over to a friend’s house to run through the sprinkler, so I decided that Simon should wear his swim trunks to avoid an unnecessary change. Believe it or not, it’s not always that fun to get a two-year-old dressed. I laid out his yellow-and-blue-striped trunks for him and went to get Ian dressed (that I dressed Ian today will become important later in the story). When Simon came downstairs, I was pretty sure we had finally come to the developmental stage where he insists on picking out his own clothes (a stage that I am totally looking forward to, by the way, because I picture myself as one of those moms who doesn’t interfere and lets her young child be seen in public in ridiculous getups while it’s still so darn cute. We’ll see how that plays out when the time comes). But as I was to discover, we’re not there yet; this outfit was Daddy’s doing:

Now, in Jason’s defense, Simon really doesn’t have any shirts that would go with those shorts, and in fact I didn’t pick out a shirt for him because I was kind of at a loss myself for how to pair them. What actually cracks me up about this outfit, though, is that after he put it on, Jason decided it “worked” because of the horizontal stripes in both.

We then turned our attention to Ian’s outfit. I went out of my way to find the plaid shorts this morning because they’re my favorites. I like the mismatched patterns and deliberately put this outfit together because I think it’s totally cute.

Jason says that I have a double standard. Maybe so, but I’ll stand by it.

So what do you think? (And don’t let this influence you or anything, but Simon already took Jason’s side this morning in an unrelated light-hearted dispute, so I’m feeling a little fragile. But like I said, don’t let that sway you to my already obviously right point of view.)

{My wonderful husband gave me a really great anniversary gift this year: a redesigned blog (and some really beautiful flowers too). I'm loving the new look and feel of The Grand. There are several new features built into this design, so I'll try to point a few of them out as I take advantage of them. Look around, be amazed at Jason's talent, and let us know if you find anything that needs some tweaking.}

I’ve long been charmed by kids’ obsessions and wondered what kinds of things my kids would be into. Simon’s first real interest was in airplanes—in fact, he was so interested in them that I entertained the idea of redecorating his room; we went to every airshow we could find last summer. More recently we went through a period of time where we watched Buzz! (Toy Story) almost every day. I thought for a while that tractors were going to be his next big thing. Or maybe construction vehicles. But while he likes his tractors, his cars, his dinosaurs, his play kitchen, nothing has even come close to his fascination with trains.

{Bigger photos! Also, click on the photo and it will pop out.}

Simon’s love of trains had an admittedly rough start: for his first Christmas (he was eleven months old), he received a train that absolutely terrified him (the giver shall remain nameless to protect my sister’s anonymity). To this day, he still won’t play with the Devil Train, though he does cautiously visit in the corner every once in a while, and we recently learned that he knows its name (Debawh Choo Choo).

The real obsession, of course, started with Thomas: Thomas videos, Thomas books, Thomas t-shirts (his favorite piece of clothing to this day), Thomas for Christmas (redemption for the Devil Train gifter), Thomas for his birthday, Thomas for bedtime stories. And so on (and on and on).

A few months ago, his passion for all things Thomas expanded to include any and all kinds of trains. And that’s when my days became all trains, all the time. To be fair, Simon’s enthusiasm is contagious, and I find myself enabling his budding interest in ferroeqinology, and liking it. Trains—and much of their history and the culture surrounding them—are actually quite interesting.

I admit that we’ve altered some of our habits in order to incorporate more trains into our daily lives:

• In our almost-daily quest to find “choo choos go!” I have found two railyards in Lincoln (who knew?).
• Instead of trying to avoid being stuck while a train passes at a crossing, we actually slow down (or speed up or take a detour) in order to be first in line.
• We have begun taking Highway 6 every time we go to Omaha. The tracks run right along the highway all the way to Gretna.
• We watch lots of train videos on YouTube (literally videos that people have taken of trains crossing).
• We review colors by naming Thomas’s friends (Toby is brown, Gordon is blue, etc.) and numbers by counting cars.

Although it’s kind of staggering when I really start to think about how much we talk about, look for, watch, and play trains, I do think that it falls into normal two-year-old behavior. I don’t know yet if Simon will be a lifelong rail fan or if he’ll “move on” in a few months or years. For now, though, I’m really enjoying watching him learn and explore and collect and wonder.

{Now there's a gallery where I can add photos related to an entry. You may have already noticed if you clicked on the picture above.}

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