thomas the tank Posts

Over on my design blog, a post about trying to get a refund from Yahoo Music. It's buyer beware in the online world where even finding a customer service phone number is a victory. I'm surprised that a division of Yahoo would stoop to such customer-unfriendly tactics. Unmentioned on the blog: that 4yo Theo spent the hour I was on the phone quietly playing in his room where unbeknownst to me he had smuggled bathtime paint and was squirting it over run, clothes, bed and himself in re-enactment of Thomas the Tank Engine crashes.

Photos clockwise: Theo blows out the birthday ice cream cake's “4” candle; kids huddle around when box opens to reveal Thomas the Tank Engine related toy; independent Francis surveys the scene; cousin M. plays pattycake with Poppop while her mom looks on.

Francis has been mostly quiet for his nineteen months, prompting the beginnings of worry but no real alarm. He's sort of said some ma-ma-ma babel but it's not been definitively tied to Julie and seemed to indicate hunger as much as anything ("mother equals food" is a primal equation perhaps even though Julie stopped nursing last December).

Well in the last few days we've had his first clear-cut words: "La la LA la." Even without the accompanying notes, most friends of toddlers will recognize Elmo's theme song. Francis starts singing it whenever he sees his little Elmo doll. It's cute enough that we forgive him not prioritizing ma-ma and pa-pa first.

I hope to get a video of Francis's La la LA la for Youtube soon. In the meantime, here's a few photos. The first includes big brother Theo and--on top of the mess--Elmo himself. The second is Francis reading a book from the Thomas the Tank Engine Railway Series (not a posed shot, he climbed the rocking chair with the book himself).

"Will It Blend?" has a solution for toddler messes. I used the suggestion box to recommend Thomas the Tank Engine paraphernalia. I'm sure Theo would stop refusing to pick up his collection at night if I showed him that video.