Diggers
These days our life is all about the hum of “tractors” going by and the constant BEEP BEEP BEEP of them reversing. Sewers are coming to the Keys (about time, eh?) and they have arrived outside the condo. SO in these last days of land-life, the girls have been treated to a wonderful education in the realm of construction vehicles. It is a parade of “tractors” for Rosy to name- “Oh, woader (loader)-backhoe! Mama, WITTLE woader!!! Where dat dump truck?” This girl loves trucks. We read truck and train books over and over again. Sophie is minorly interested, but mostly likes to read the word CAT on the skid-steer loader (aka “wittle woader”). She also approves of the incredible mud they’re making for us to stomp off our shoes.
The other obsession of late? Trains. Rosy has a book of the Thomas the Tank Engine characters and can name them like pictures in a dictionary. They have a half dozen engines at this point and play with them constantly. Rosy likes to name them and click them all together until it gets unwieldy- ‘Dis train TOOO long.” Sophie takes them to school and gives them lessons in stopping, rescuing, whistling. We had a small wooden train set when she was Rosy’s age that rarely got played with. The Thomas characters, with their faces, are right up her pretend-play alley. They have personalities. It also helps to trash the track. Liberated from the rails, trains can make their home anywhere in the house, in the company of all sorts of other vehicles, robots, little people, fairies, loader-backhoes, dumptrucks . . .
