Insights from a nearly 2-year old

So while reading a book, we see a picture of Humpty Dumpty. X asked "what's that?" I tell him and recite "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again." X looks at me, thinks for a second, then says... "He broke." Can't get much past this one!

Big into 'what's that?' questions these days -- more about sounds he hears, vs. things he sees, but very curious overall.

X had his first trip to the Boston Aquarium this past weekend... and (even more exciting) his first TRAIN RIDE!!! Grammie and Mommy and X took the T from Wellesley to Boston and Xander was in his glory (although he fell asleep in Mommy's lap on the longer of the two trains we had to take, both in and out of Boston, so he missed most of the experience. But honestly, I think watching the train come and getting on it was more than enough for him! While waiting at Government Center T stop for our connecting train to the Green line, we had to watch a few trains go by before ours came. One came and it was very loud and it started to pull away and I looked down and Xander had started to cry and was getting upset and I squatted down to assure him that yes, it was loud and it was ok -- but realized that was he was REALLY upset about was that the train was leaving and we hadn't gotten on it ;-)

When we got to the Aquarium and were standing outside buying tickets, there was a brown shark 'mascot' (i.e. guy in costume) walking around entertaining the kids and getting pix taken. After we got our tickets we went over to see him and X got his pix taken with the shark and his buddy the seal mascot. Then we go inside... and Grammie and I think that Xander is going to be entralled... after all, this kid's room is decorated with an undersea theme... he LOVES Baby Neptune and Finding Nemo and his Cat in the Hat book about fish in the sea (and recites it... "the top parts are sunny, the bottom parts black - we'll go to the bottom and then we'll come back... Sunny Zone, Twilight Zone, Dark Zone, Abyss... the Trench at the bottom you won't wan to miss). He also orders me to sing "the Mr. Ray song" from Finding Nemo 24x7... "Ohhhhhhhhhhh, let's name the zones, the zones, the zones... let's name the zones of the open seeeeeeeeeeeea... there's Epipelagic, Mesopelagic, Bathypelagic, Abyssopelagic, the rest are all too deep for you and me to seeeeeeeeeee..."

BUT, after a few perfunctory glances as the various fish, yadda yadda - he keeps saying "Brown Shark! Brown Shark! Go see Brown Shark!"...he wants to go back out and visit the shark mascot and he probably would have been happy for hours there if we could have tolerated the 45 degree weather for that long (which we couldn't...)

Oh well - so much for the best laid plans... a good reminder to Mommy that my expectations are NOT his reality ;-)