Trouble on the Line

So, I had this great idea to take Payton to a train store that I recently found out about. I knew they carried a lot of Thomas the Train items, as well as some Lionel trains. I wish I could have recorded Payton's face when we first walked in to this store. There were trains on every square inch of the wall, every shelf, every table top, every... well.. everything! They had a few Lionel sets that were all hooked up and running, which he loved to watch. Then we discovered that there was a back room just for kids! It was filled with Thomas stuff, including THREE train tables!
I thought he was in heaven... until I heard those dreaded words... "No mama, I want to buy one of those real-looking trains!" He was referring to the Lionel trains of course. The $400 per train Lionel trains I might add. It is the first time in the child's life when he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the Thomas trains or tracks that were set up. All he wanted was to choose a "real-looking" train to take home. As you can imagine, a 3-year old doesn't have any concept of money and certainly couldn't rationalize the fact that one of these little trains cost more than his entire collection of Thomas trains at home. If you are a mom, you can probably figure out what happened next...

Lots of screaming and crying ensued and Payton had to be carried out of the store kicking and screaming "I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE!!!" He wailed in the car most of the way home until he realized we really weren't turning around to go back to the store (even though he asked about 100 times).

Nothing more was spoken about the train store last night - thank God. And I thought our promise to take him back next weekend had finally subsided the issue. That was until about 6 a.m. this morning when I was greeted by a little finger tapping on my shoulder whispering, "Mama, can we go to the train store now?" Gotta love his unrelenting spirit.