A Diesel Ducy of his own

As many parents of Fragile X know, our guys (and girls!) can be a little obsessed with things.  The professionals call it having high interest areas.  For years, Drew has loved watching elevator videos.  I used to think it was strange, but now when I go to a hotel, I find myself thinking, Hey this is an Otis, or, Oh, it's a Schindler.  I bet the door close button doesn't work. Who knew?!  Anyway,  he watches these videos of elevators on YouTube.  There is a user with the username DieselDucy.  These are some of Drew's favorite videos. DieselDucy actually holds a train in his hand at the beginning of all his videos. Like this:

 
Drew, of course, has picked up on this and adapted it for himself.  I have talked with many Fragile X parents, and another thing our kids have in common is the need for props.  If you are watching Horton Hears a Who you need to hold a flower.  If you are watching Rosie and Jim, you need an accordian.  So, when you are watching DieselDucy elevators, you need a train to hold.  We don't have a train just like DieselDucy's, so Drew has taken to holding Thomas the Tank Engine while watching the videos.

I was out Christmas shopping one day, and was having a hard time finding things for Drew.  I stopped and thought, What does Drew really like?  Elevators.  And then I thought maybe I could get him a DieselDucy train.  I looked at all the Thomas trains and Chuggington trains and the generic ones, too.  They weren't just like it, and I thought if I was going to try to make one, I had better get the train part right, anyway.  So, I found out who DieselDucy is and contacted him about what kind of train it is.

He was very nice and we had a great conversation.  He told me that they are fairly easy to find on Ebay.  They are Matchbox brand and were made in England in 1978, I believe.  We bought two.  I got some paint and set out to duplicate DieselDucy's trains. This is what they originally looked like:
 

 
Eric roughed them up with some sandpaper so the paint would stick better.  Then I used this photo as my guide:

And this is what I came up with:

I know he is going to love it!  I love when things turn out how I envisioned them. 

It's December already??!!

The past month has flown by!  We have been doing some renovations to our home.  We put in hardwood flooring and replaced the carpet in the bedrooms and toyroom. We replaced all the baseboards and wood trim, and all the doors as well.   The boys didn't like the chaos, but handled it like troopers.  I shuffled them between relatives' houses after school until bedtime for a week straight!  Things are settling down, though the changes are not completed yet.  We still have a fair amount of painting to have done and our new furniture for the living room is not in yet.  I'll post pictures when it's all done.

For the past week or so, Blake has been asking if it is Christmas yet and asked about putting the tree up.  Eric told him that we needed to get new floors done before we could get the tree out.  So, finally he put the tree up last night.  Blake was thrilled.  He kept saying, "Christmas?  Santa be here in two minutes?  Where's cookies?"  Things like that.  I made him a calendar to show him that it was December first and we will mark off the days until Christmas, but that didn't convince him.

He helped put the star on the Christmas tree last night.  Most people put that on last, but Eric wanted to make Blake happy, so he let him do it as soon as the tree was up.

  This morning, Blake said, "Hey, where's presents?  Is it Christmas?"  Apparently the calendar was pointless.  :)