Planes, Trains and Automobiles

It appears that the "he's all boy" theme to Sam's life is continuing right on track. Of latest note: his obsession with big, loud things that move.

When we bought this house 4 years ago, we had no idea how the corner lot would serve as such a particular blessing to our future offspring. You see, on Thursdays the trash trucks come. Yes, truckS. The city of Houston uses the kind that only require one driver and have a mechanical arm that grabs the can, lifts, dumps, and places/drops the can back on the ground. The mechanical arm is only on one side of the truck, so it must make two passes down every street. We live on 2 streets, so on any given Thursday we can see the trash truck 4 times from our own yard. Once a month a recycling truck comes too...those days its up to 6 times. We spend the whole morning with our ears tuned for the sound. When one of us hears it, we announce to the other and both RUN outside as fast as possible (you can't imagine the disappointment if we are too slow and miss it!). I have now run out of my house in various stages of "ready for the day" in order to properly greet the truck. And there is one driver who looks for us now and is sure to honk his horn for Sam every week. Its really sweet.

The other unmistakable sound that Sam always has his ears tuned for is that of a train. We live a few miles from 2 sets of tracks and at certain times a day we can hear some train horns. Honestly, Sam hears them way more than I do. But he'll make sure I don't miss them. "train. Train. TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN." You must acknowledge the train to be able to move forward in life. One set of these tracks runs right behind our YMCA. And you know what? You can see the tracks from the window of the childcare room. Its like the Lord loves my son, or something. He now asks to go to the gyms so he can look for trains. Yesterday he heard the whistle in the parking lot and started panicking. We ran into the building and burst into the room lest the train be gone before he could see it. Good times.

He knows the sound of airplanes, too. Early on I started to respond to his announcement of "ah-peen" by saying "I see it!" or "I hear it!" Now he declares "Ah-Peen, I see it!" even if he cannot. Not sure he really knows what that phrase means. We also talk about Gammy a lot when we see the planes. "Gammy ah-peen" means that My grandma went home to her house on an airplane.

Its really cute to watch him get so excited. And I am thankful that I can use "do you want to get in the car and look for trucks?" as a bribe to get him into his carseat without a fight. But what will we do for our after-lunch entertainment when the finish the construction next door?