Thomas meets Alice in Wonderland

La bête humaine, originally uploaded by Pir.

When Franklin was a younger he was obsessed with trains. Thomas became a regular in our house and we joke about the largest plastic bin we own that is filled with the wooden tracks and trains that will very likely become our retirement fund. Thank-you grandparents.

When I was traveling through Europe, one of the books I picked up in a bookstore was Emile Zola’s La Bête humaine. I had no idea that it was made into a movie. In fact, many of the books I’ve read I’m discovering have been made into a movie. It never used to be this way. I haven’t really decided whether I like this or not. Of course, it’s totally my decision to log on to IMDb and ruin the images for myself.

Of course, I do it every time.

Anyway, this movie has an opening scene that is totally mesmerizing:

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No kidding, eh?

However, what I once thought was a toy left behind has been picked up with renewed fervor by Eliza. We are reading the books again, setting up the tracks and getting to know all the trains – both diesels and steamies. As our two children are so different in personality, there isn’t really much chance to compare them at similar stages. In fact, this is one of the first times I can remember certain things that Franklin did that are definitely different than Eliza and not a result of memory loss or a consequence of our new family dynamics once she was born.

Of course, I’m not going to get on the internet and tell you the differences. As strange as it may seem to those who don’t write about their families online, I’m not really all that fond of directly comparing or defining my children in public. From the very start of my pregnancy, these two have been so different… and yet, very much the same. The last thing I want to do is label them as “the meticulous one” , “the mysterious one” or “the imaginative one” because don’t we all have these traits at one time or another?

I come from a large family and even if my parents did or didn’t compare, the rest of the world seemed to give me and my siblings specific definitions. I didn’t realize how ingrained these definitions were until I received an Alice in Wonderland chess set from my parents.

A chess set?

Could this mean that I possibly had a brain that could handle chess? This meant I wasn’t just a girl but I had some of that elusive intelligence everyone seemed to attribute to my brainy older brother?!?
I sat on my bed and had a happy cry about that one.

Sigh. Oh the drama of being a tween.