I have a little problem on my hands. This weekend, I took the boys down the street so they could play with a few of their friends. While they were there, the boy Wyatt's age began bringing out a bunch of their wooden trains to play with. They have a much nicer deck than we do, so there was plenty of space to spread it out without getting it dirty. All five boys hunched over and played very nicely with the trains for quite some time. Wyatt was the first one who walked off and did something else, as he's more of a building sort of kid than a train lover. Oscar, however, was completely in love.
Today, he kept begging me to go back to their house and let him play with Thomas. Unfortunately, both parents work, so I couldn't even call to see if it was okay. By the time Oliver came home for the day, he was very worked up about it. Oliver promised him he would buy something for him if he started being good about prayers.
As Oscar is only two, prayer time is usually goof off time, and we've been unsuccessful at improving his behavior. I didn't really think this promise would help, but it did. He was amazingly good at both our dinner and evening prayers, and even said them himself. I'm now faced with the need to find something on the internet ASAP before he thinks we were lying to him.
Sigh. Oliver wants me to just buy some Thomas related thing, but I know that isn't what he wants. He wants the wooden trains. We decided a long time ago that we were going to do the GeoTrax set, and it worked great for Wyatt. Oscar likes them, too, but he still gravitates toward the few Take-Along Thomas' that we had bought Wyatt before realizing he wasn't into them (I hate that set, and the tracks never stay together, although the trains are nicely made). He fell completely, and totally in love with the wooden set and Thomas is the train set he wants.
The thing is, I don't really want another train set. We are tight on space as it is. I can see dumping some more toys to make room for them, and luckily they don't take us much space put away, but that then leads to the other problem: they are expensive! To get a decent set would cost way more than I want to spend right now. And while we could start small, even that will likely lead to buying more at a later date. I wish we could do Craigslist or something, but that isn't an option here (our friends' down the street are lucky to have family in Florida who arranged their train purchase, so they got a bunch for really cheap).
So, I'm trolling the internet right now trying to find some kind of solution. I've spent some time on Ebay, but they are mostly about new and over-priced collectibles now. If anyone has a good link to somewhere that might sell me something used (which is absolutely fine, and preferable), I'd love to have it.
2 sonar pings:
Oh, I wish we didn't have ours in storage right now, or I'd share! We were only allowed to bring 1/4 of our weight limit here, so we had to be very choosy. Even though my youngest is 11 and we've long since grown out of our trains, I am holding onto them for grandchildren, but we could have spared a few. They have a lifetime warranty (both the Thomas and the Brio wooden trains) and we have had absolute, no hassle replacements with them...so if you can get a hold of some good prices on eBay (keep looking) they are worth the investment. We built our collection almost exclusively from eBay...a little at a time. Good luck! BTW...we started with the figure 8 set. It's simple, but a good one.
I'd even send you some of Leighton's trains. However, he still is in to them for the most part, but we won't be buying any more. He goes on tangents of that's all he wants to play with then for weeks it's no trains but all cars. Good Luck with something. I know when you promise a child a reward that remember!
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