New Obsession Yay!

This past week we discovered our son Gavin has a new love when we were at my mom's house. If you've read my sister Erin's blog, you'll see Evan my nephew who is 4 months older then Gavin is obsessed with the same thing, what can I say? They are definately similar and all boy! My older sister Shannon has two boys who at one point were in love with Thomas the Tank Engine and anything having to do with trains so their house is absolutely full of trains everywhere. Up until recently we had Erin's train table that she was so lucky to get when working at an educational toy store but its gone back to Canada with her because Evan is so in love. Shannon replaced it with her own that she purchased and has been lieing in wait under her bed, its not as cool but it is a close second to Erin's.

How the discovery of trains started:

We decided to go on a date night to the movies and my parents watched Gavin for the evening. When we came to pick him up he was sitting with Auntie Shannon watching Thomas and was so enthralled. Every day since then, when we went to their house he'd find a Thomas and make train whistle noises and sit for a long time playing with just trains. My sister said "you need to get that kid some trains, look at him!" My mom being the awesome Grandma that she is has a "Grandma Closet" and went searching to see what she could find and found a brand new train named Murdoch that he has preceded to take everywhere with him since he got it. We went to Costco the same day and I searched for anything Thomas and lo and behold! They just came out with a new 60 min video "Thomas and the Great Discovery" can you guess how many times we've watched this movie so far? I stopped counting. So we are starting to slowly feed his love for Thomas and trains because hey, there could be worse things to get obsessed with, at least this is educational.

Interesting facts about Thomas:

I used to watch Thomas when I was younger, that's how long its been on and it was called Shining Time Station for the purposes of the American version when I watched it. There was usually in the beginning a scene with real people in it and eventually some kids would call upon "Mister Conductor" which was a tiny little conductor from the island of Sodor who would precede to tell a story about Thomas and his friends. The list of men who have played "Mister Conductor" include the original which was Ringo Starr and George Carlin, after the station part of the show went away the Narrator of the stories has also included Alec Baldwin and now in the new movie is Pierce Brosnan. Included in the original cast and regulars of Shining Time Station were Didi Conn (also known as the original Frenchie from the Grease Movie), Lloyd Bridges (actor and father to Jeff and Beau Bridges), Rachel Miner (ex wife of actor McCauley Calkin) and the list goes on. Its interesting the small roles that actors take before they are super famous or are already famous and just want to take the role.

Thank you Auntie Shannon for your use of trains and everything to go with them, I am sure we will have a lot of train talk in this house for a while and I'm having another boy so I'm also pretty sure at one point he'll be in love with it too.