Right now Pete spends a lot of time playing trains and pretending to be a restaurateur.
I suppose almost every boy goes through a train fascination, but Pete's is deeper and more enduring than his brothers'. We have acquired a supply of wooden track and engines over the years, but Pete is the first of my four to play with them every day.
The restaurant game started last fall at a playground. You order; he brings you food. He asks what else you'd like; he brings that too. Sometimes there's a little delay while he grills your burger or flips your pancakes, but it goes on and on. Nobody leaves Pete's Restaurant still hungry. Now that it's winter, Pete's has moved to the living room. He clears everything off the couch (being admirably careful of my knitting if I have left it on the couch) and motions his customers to sit in front. No one can touch the couch cushions, because they are his stove and they get dangerously hot. Unfortunately, people forget. "No touch a food!" calls Pete to anyone foolish enough to sit on the burners.
Here's the funny thing: I am always the preferred customer for the restaurant game. He will only ask me to play trains in a pinch, and then my sole responsibility is to keep scooting my engine with one or two attached cars around the oval track. I mustn't stop, and I mustn't get creative. He doesn't want me to build, or tell stories, or do anything but push my little train around slowly. With Elwood, though, he wants complicated loops of track built. They have conversations that I find a little puzzling. Even as I type, Elwood is trying to sneak a look at the NYT and Pete is saying, "Come! Play trains! Plaaaaayy traaaaaiinnns!"
Elwood might prefer to play the restaurant game, since customers can read or knit at the table as long as they attend to the waiter when required, but no dice. He's the train guy; I'm the restaurant customer. There's a lot to appreciate about two-year-olds, but flexibility doesn't make the list.
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