Four questions

There are four questions we consistently hear throughout the day:

1. Why (fill in the blank)?

This question appears to be an instinctive one, that Zach will utter in response to anything I say. The why can be related to everything from "why can't you turn left even though the light is green?" to "why didn't Wyatt want to share his cars?" I do my best to avoid "because I said so," but I have to admit there's a time and a place when that response is appropriate, especially after I've already been asked why 17 times.

2. How many minutes?

Zach is currently obsessed with minutes. He doesn't really understand the concept of time, he just knows that we often refer to things in terms of minutes, so he is now asking for minute estimates for just about everything. How many minutes until daddy gets home? How many minutes until I am going to read him this book? How many minutes does he have to sleep? (That was a good one I heard him ask Scott... Scott told him 660 minutes, which sounded so absurd I had to laugh.) How many minutes until we go to grandma and grandpa's house? Too many!!! Anyway, we've had basic conversations about telling time and how long a minute is, but I'm starting to think we're going to need to start learning more details about the clock sooner rather than later.

3. Do you want to play Geotrax?

If you are not familiar, Geotrax is a train track system with trains that operate primarily through remote control. My dad is known as "Grandpa Geo" to my niece and nephew due to his enthusiasm (addiction?) for these particular toys. So Zach received his first Geotrax train set-up for his 2nd birthday, I've gotten him some extra tracks and construction vehicles I found at a garage sale, and for Christmas G&G Klicka got him the ultimate - a Geotrax system that has some of his favorite Cars characters as the "trains." This video shows his reaction when he was opening it.

I found a way to hook all the tracks together, and this monstrous apparatus now takes up the majority of the floor in Zach's "playroom." It's worth it though, because he loves it and plays with it a lot; we are heading out soon to purchase rechargeable batteries because we were flying through the AAAs!

4. Do you want to play cars?

As the saying goes, if I had a nickel every time I heard this question... But I am happy to say that even though he keeps asking, we generally don't have to play cars with Zach any more! He can entertain himself with his cars for at least an hour, with minimal input from me (just a general "oh really?" in response to statements like "mama, Doc was about to pass the King but then Lightning came up from behind and won!") We don't really even pick the cars up any more to put them "away" - since there really is no point.

There's been an interesting evolution in how he plays with his ever-growing collection of cars; now he'll even play with ones that aren't from the movie! He used to just recreate scenes from the movie; now he incorporates the various Cars books we've read, as well as his own story lines, mixing up who plays what role, etc. It's pretty interesting to observe - well, listen to mostly - since he narrates every scenario as he plays it out. But of course every time we've tried to videotape it, he notices and stops what he's doing. So the following movie is our best effort: the first part is him quoting directly from one of his Cars books; the second is him just making things up as he goes along.