Thomas, Thomas, THOMAS

If you are the parent to a preschool age boy, you most certainly know who Thomas the tank engine is. We here live and breathe Thomas...and the whole friggin' island of Sodor where he and his fellow train and vehicle friends live. And of course we own a train table, tracks and every other imaginable accessory known to the collection. But wait..there is a wooden collection (which is the preferred one), a die cast collection (which is "travel" sized), a lego collection, and a variety of all kinds of other types. Big pull toys, small toys, and DVD's...whatever your little heart desires..whatever my little Ian wants..it's available. What more could a mother want? And my two year old who is very verbal but barely capable of constructing a complete sentence knows every single name of these silly trains. Some of them have really goofy British names like Scarloey and Percy. Well, Percy isn't that odd. But my son can name thousands of engines.

My point is, moms get ready for big expenses...in our day (yeah..I'm getting crotchity already) there weren't these giant add on sets like there are today. Everything today builds upon each other where you can spend literally hundreds upon thousands of dollars on toys. Although, my daughter is still a baby, so I don't know where the expenses lie in the girl arena yet.

I just spent twenty five bucks on a polyester overlay costume of Thomas for my son to wear this Halloween because I knew it would be the only thing he would allow me to dress him as. It had to have cost fifty times more than what it cost to be made and probably came from, ironically enough, the country most of us are planning to adopt from. Oh well. We're only young once.