Tristan is quickly developing an obsession with Thomas the Train.

We picked up some trains and tracks the last time we went to Ikea – couldn’t have been too long ago, maybe three months?  And at first, Tristan needed to be supervised with them.  He got INSANELY frustrated whenever he couldn’t get the trains to stick together properly.  They were taken away a lot because he’d seriously lose his shit over it whenever the line of trains disintegrated.  Since we refuse to encourage him losing his shit unnecessarily, he needed to be gradually accustomed to the system.

Fast forward past our Vegas trip about a week, when I gave him the battery-operated, SELF-MOVING Thomas.  And it all began to click.  James has spent a LOT of time with Tristan playing with the trains and showing him how to have fun.  After all, battery-operated trains can be used to push uncooperative little trains around in a line.  And so we expanded our set with a second battery-operated train (Percy, the green one), a shitload more tracks, and a couple more from the Thomas line that were less active.

Last night, we had the following – a Thomas video on, a Thomas iPad app being played, and trains in clear sight and frequently approached.

This article was interrupted by Tristan waking up and resuming the Thomas-thon.

When my little brother was obsessed with Thomas, I tried very hard to pretend that no such trains existed.  Now, I’m glad to hear George Carlin’s voice narrating the videos (RIP).  Too bad he doesn’t drop the F-bomb a bit in these; they might be more interesting that way.

But Tristan is now firmly interested in a stereotypical BOY interest.

I taught Tristan that the keys on a piano/musical keyboard have letters; e.g. A, B, etc.  Tonight, he took ALL of his magnetic letters and placed them on the keyboard, and then proceeded to play right over them.  He’s not labeling them correctly yet, but.. giggle.

Seriously, did I just blink or miss almost a month of our lives?

I managed to chronicle that we were starting potty training, at least.  And so far, it’s going wonderfully.  Tristan understands that pee goes in the toilet and he will pee in there on command if anything’s in there.  He hasn’t yet pooped in the toilet, and I think he’s a little bit scared of the process.

But the big news is that we’ve been on a plane and survived!  Our kid wasn’t even the most annoying kid on the flight!

During the first week of June, we took our trip to Las Vegas to meet up with our family and spend some time among the lights and stimulation of the strip.  We stayed there for about a week, which was probably three days too long.  James’s parents were there, along with his sister Cindy, and my mom and stepdad joined us for part of the trip.  We rented adjacent suites – we figured that it would be SO much easier to coordinate people and pawn Tristan off on some of them if we were all in the same location.

Tristan’s favorite activities included opening, closing, opening, and closing all doors, including the balcony door, the bathroom doors, the bedroom door, the toilet seat cover, and the shower doors.  He enjoyed the sights from the 12th floor balcony, including pools, trees, cars, and the lights of the hotels.  There wasn’t a whole lot to DO there other than travel about and see things for children, but Tristan got a whole lot of time doing those things.  We got several-day monorail passes and he quite enjoyed riding on the train.  We also had one chance to go into the pool, which was this lazy-river sort of thing – Tristan enjoyed the water but disliked the floating tubes.

As far as relating to people went, Tristan was a considerable koala.  He got really, really, really upset whenever I disappeared from a room.  We had to sneak around a lot so that he never saw me so much as go to the toilet.  He related very well to his Grandma Linda and Aunt Cindy (read: they could sometimes calm him down even when he was being a butt), and even slept in the bed with Cindy (YAY!  We got a break from the bedtime routine!)

I’m totally up for taking another airplane trip, but I’m not sure I want to try to pass an entire week in one location without a doppelganger of myself so that I don’t have to hear “waaaaaaaaaAAAH!” for stepping out of Tristan’s sight. 😉