"Lot lot lot tack"

forget your dolls and other such sweet toys. we're dealing with boys here, and that, my friends, means things with triggers or handles or wheels and engines: things like trains. we inherited a very large collection of tracks & trains from my nephew dominic. i  mean, we have everything, even the roundhouse.

finn lost his stories for the day due to a morning tantrum (5 in the morning, no less), so we had to resort to alternative entertainment this morning. so, naturally, we turned to trains. momma decided to build a great big track, lots and lots of track--thus the title, which is Finn's rendition of said phrase. here is my supposed masterpiece:



soon, though, i realized a critical flaw:

those of you with track building experience will recognize it: the train is stuck on that one little circle. all that glorious track, and it got stuck on one little circle. i groaned inwardly as i recalled that building wooden thomas tracks takes an engineering degree. so i made one little switch and thought proudly, and falsely, that i had solved the problem. this was overly optimistic: the train was now stuck on a slightly larger circle. so i started rummaging for just the right piece, which means that all of the connecters have to be in the right spots and all the curves in just the right direction. this is no small task. here you see but a small portion of all the track at our disposal:

i confess i began to get a bit frantic as the proper combinatino of curves and connecters avoided me. i could only find pieces like this:



oh no. i so am not up for that right now. i don't know if even we have enough track to introduce that piece, and certainly neither Finn nor i has the patience. with a little bit of rearranging and finagling, though, i finally did it! here is. room for multiple trains, complete with trestle bridges, hills, points, lots of loops, even a tunnel.



Finn really isn't quite old enough to understand the tracks, though, let alone appreciate such a work of english-major-turned-railroad-constructor's art. sure enough, far less than five minutes after i finished, the destruction had begun.



ah, c'est la vie. so we went outside on the front porch to watch the "lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot lot wreen." someday soon, i've no doubt, momma's days will be spent building all kinds of tracks that will get used for more than hammers.