Focus

My son has been playing with these tracks for four days. I am utterly and completely blown away by the fact that something has kept his attention for that long. Four days!

These tracks are probably over 30 years old -- they belonged to my brothers who raced their Hot Wheels or Matchboxes. These tracks have been stored in the attic -- along with many of our other childhood toys -- and they come out from time to time when my kids play upstairs with their grandparents. Some time ago my dad dragged out these tracks for the first time and Aidan was enthralled. At the time, though, he played with them for just a few minutes and then that was it.

Four days ago we were upstairs and the kids immediately went to the stash of toys on the attic stairs. Grace picked up her usual favorite, Pop-Up Pirate, and Aidan saw the bag of tracks -- having completely forgotten about them -- and asked if he could bring them downstairs. And here they are. He has all of his cars from the CARS movie, as well as several Matchboxes and race cars, and one by one he shoots them down the track, seeing which one will make it all the way to the end. He's like a little puppy playing fetch with a stick -- one car zips to the end, he fetches it, and brings it back. Over and over again. He's making the cars talk to each other too, so there's some plot going on as well. I have never seen him so focused on anything -- at least certainly not for days on end. He doesn't have ADD or anything like that -- he's just never been the kind of kid that can sit and play with something for a long period of time. Each night we dismantle the entire set-up and make the living room spotlessly clean of any and all toys. And each morning he wakes up, has his yogurt drink and granola bar, and then heads over to the bag of tracks, setting it up again. I wonder how long this will last ... I love it. It's just too bad it takes up over 2/3 of our entire apartment.