Engineer Kitty

Daddy put a train under the tree again this year and is letting Amelia do the controls. She is doing such a good job of listening to him and treating the train respectfully. It's a pretty expensive one - a serious collector/modeler's train (which Daddy is) and not just a toy. I am impressed that he lets her run it and even more impressed by how well she does it. She really enjoys it, too, which I think pleases him as well. He was trying to get a good picture of her running the train and he asked her to look up - this is what he got. And she insists on being called Engineer Kitty.

Later in the day we went to the Speedway to see the Christmas lights they do every year. We have never been although I've wanted to go. It's amazing how much having a child can change someone else's mind about doing things. (For me, it's seeing children's movies - something I would never do before; for him it's things like the Christmas lights.)

We made the mistake of telling Amelia that when we get to the center there is an area for children to get out and play. The entire way through the drive-through display we hear, "Are we there yet?" No. Then if we slowed down to an almost stop she would say, "Is this where I can get out?" No. They even had two potty stops but she wasn't interested in that. We finally got to where you can get out after going one lap on the race track - way cool - the wall on the turns really is high! (But Daddy wouldn't take it at 20 mph, darn.) The inside of the track had some carnival rides and food vendors selling kettle corn, hot chocolate, Russian tea, etc. They had a Santa Claus, too, but Amelia wasn't interested in getting her picture done.

One of the carnival rides was one of those walk-through sorts where you go up a ladder and then down a big slide. Amelia spied it from the carousel that we rode and really wanted to go inside. I tried to let her go by herself (to save tickets) but she came running back out like she was scared. The theme was a pirate ship and I had asked the guy initially if he thought she could do it by herself and he assured me she could. When I went in it was pretty scary and the thing that scared Amelia was the floor turning red like there were hot coals underneath. I picked her up and showed her it was just pretend and we went through the rest of it and up the stairs. She enjoyed it and happily went down the slide. My joining her used up the last of the tickets and it was getting late so we headed home. Amelia talked about the floor turning red most of the way home. "What scared me?" The floor turning red. "Because red means hot?" Yes. "And blue means cold?" Yes. "And I thought the floor was going to be hot?" Yes. "And that scared me?" Yes. "What scared me?" [and this began the conversation again; repeat ad infinitum].

Not exactly what I had in mind for a memorable family holiday outing, but I'm pretty sure she will remember the experience.

[picture dated 11/29/09]