Month 20, Day 10: A love of trains and tot-sized pull luggage

We are still recovering a bit from a busy visit to California for Aunt Stephanie's wedding reception last weekend. Max weathered his 8th round-trip flight probably a little better than Mom and Dad. Too bad he wasn't able to rack up the frequent flier miles, but once we start paying for his seat after his second birthday in a few short months, he'll be flying for free in no time at that rate.

We made two great discoveries during the trip: Max loves toy trains. And Max loves pulling his own luggage. The train discovery was made at the wedding reception, where the hostess had a laundry basket full of wooden tracks and engines/cabs that clicked together with magnets. It was the longest that Max self-entertained himself - Mom was super thrilled (although we did have to strategically distract him when we left so he wouldn't steal them). Below you can see Captain America standing guard over Max's railroad.

After Max grew increasingly frustrated with not being able to pull our heavy luggage, we picked up a kid-size Diego backpack with wheels. As with the trains, you couldn't wrestle this thing away from him. This actually might break the habit of him wanting to be carried (by Mom generally) all the time.

A family friend took the picture below of Max looking adorable on the checkered dance floor. He really tore the place up (not to mention that he was one of the first "single guys" on the floor when they announced the garter toss and came "this close" to catching it).