The Train Set and Toy Story

I try to do a decent job of boy-themed play with my grandson. Not having a daddy around to show him this stuff, I try to fill the gap when Papa is busy with other things.

You know those wooden train sets with Thomas the Tank Engine - and the generic versions of them? Sort of like this one.   We have about a million pieces: trains, bridges, mountain, etc that we set up and take down often with Tyler, our grandson. For a just-turned-two year old, he's getting good at connecting the track pieces. His train set can take up the whole floor of his play room, just so you can imagine. The train table never gets used for our elaborate constructions. It is way too small. It has been converted to Handy Manny's hangout and Tyler's desk, but that is another story.

Anyway, I have obviously seen too many Toy Story movies, and he hasn't yet. I still think Sid and his mutant toys are creepy - way too much for a child to watch. So Tyler did not get it when I was having fun with him this past Saturday. I set the pig from his farm set on the tracks and said he was Evil Dr. Porkchop. *blank look followed by eyebrows going down in the middle*  Then I got his blue plastic dinosaur and made "Rex" jump up and down on the bridge, saying he wanted to eat Dr. Porkchop and made roaring noises.  *frowning now*

Tyler got up, took the blue dinosaur, put him in the Time Out chair and wagged his finger at me. "No more dinosaurs for you!"

So, I guess we will be sticking to arranging the tracks in different configurations and seeing if Thomas can make the descending curve without crashing from now on. Or until Tyler wants to play more creatively. His choice!