Ten Trains a Chugging...

Long before we met Louis--or even knew we had a son waiting for us in China--we knew our child would spend a good part of the Christmas season visiting train layouts. After all, John and I have spent every Christmas season going from one fire hall to the next to see train gardens.

It's lucky for Louis that he happens to like trains quite a bit himself.

His father still greets him every morning through the bedroom door with "Caboose...hopper...engine...train," as Louis repeats each word, throwing in an occasional "dickadoo" at the end just to see how Baba reacts. They have been doing this back-and-forth for so long that I think Louis believes it's the equivalent of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" or "Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in." One day he'll find out it's just a Baba Special.

This weekend our train enthusiast and his equally-if-not-more-enthusiastic son went on their last trip of the year to see Christmas trains on display.

As we have made the rounds this year, we've seen plenty of variety. At one of the displays we saw Santa and Mrs. Claus. At one Louis got hard candy I had to confiscate. Sometimes there are buttons to press to make a man fly a kite or a helicopter's rotors spin. Sometimes Thomas is there, and sometimes he's not. A few have burning buildings with fire engines fighting the fires. We look for the Grinch and Winnie-the-Pooh and other friends. So far we've only found one train garden with a UFO.

This display was at one of our favorite train-viewing spots, and Louis knew what he would find--the red caboose he loves to climb inside and the bell he is allowed to ring once each visit. (It's the museum's rule, not ours, and it's a good one.)

The bell and the caboose will be there next time we stop by the museum. But the train displays will be gone, packed away for another year. So Louis soaked them in, watching them go through tunnels, over bridges, and speeding past each other just when he thought they would bump.

The only thing that would have made the visit more perfect, as Baba pointed out, would have been if a real freight train had gone by while we were there.

No such luck. But it was still a terrific visit--even with the parking ticket we found on our car. We may know every Christmas train display in the area, but apparently we don't know which meters need feeding on Sundays. Louis was fascinated at the idea of someone leaving a ticket on our car. He talked on and on about how we were going to send money to a policeman.

His parents? We weren't quite as charmed. But we'll just have to chalk it up to those (meter) maids a milking.