All aboard!

Last weekend Andy went to the World Beer Festival in Durham. Chad and I were not invited, but that's a moot point because neither of us were at all interested in attending. So we decided to visit the Durham Life and Science Museum for the morning instead. As soon as we got the parking lot, Chad asked if we were going to see the animals and ride the train. Train tickets are extra, and you have to buy them for specific rides, so I told him we would definitely see the animals and maybe ride the train if there were tickets available for one of the morning rides.
The museum opens at 9:00 for members and 10:00 for peasants like us. We got there at about 10:20, and immediately were broken-hearted: the early bird members must have all wanted to ride the train because there were NO tickets available until the 2:30 ride!! I told Chad that we could still see the animals but I couldn't get us tickets for the train. Cue meltdown in 3... 2.... no? We're good? OK. Chad was mature about not getting on the train that day, and instead we played with the construction trucks in the sand, then saw the animals, the insects, the butterflies for about 30 seconds before Chad announced that he didn't like butterflies, and the dinosaurs. We also took our first visit to the fossil pit. If you find the golden shark tooth in the fossil pits you get a prize. We didn't find it, but we weren't looking particularly hard. We were really just there to dig.

And in the afternoon we bought a tiny pumpkin to paint:

And we also had a picnic while watching baseball.  I thought it was a fun day, but when Chad was telling Andy about it he kept saying "We saw animals, but no train. No monies for the train." We since figured out that Chad thinks "tickets" and "money" are synonyms. Anyway, all week long he kept talking about how we couldn't ride the train because we had no money. Sure, come February, when we're buying diapers for two, formula for two, and paying almost twice our mortgage for daycare, there will be NO money for train tickets, but for now, they're only $3 each, and I would have splurged on that! This "No train, because there was no monies." was making me sad for him!
So something had to be done about this.
This was my solution:

Turns out you can buy one adult and one child Amtrak ticket to ride a real train from Durham to Raleigh (with a brief stop in Cary) for less than $10. That's less than half of what we would pay if he and I went to the museum and bought tickets for their little train ride, plus this lasted a whole lot longer.
Andy drove us to the Durham Amtrak station, and Chad and I lined up on platform. I was worried he would get scared by how loud the train was when it pulled into the station, but he was fine.

We're on there, some place.

Other than loudly yelling, "Bye Daddy!" as we pulled away, Chad was a perfect little passenger. He was so excited to be on a big train.

Too short to see out the window, so he rode on my lap the whole time. That's a luggage tag he's holding. I told him it was his ticket and he had to bring it with him.

Most of the view was ugly, but there was a bit of construction on the nearby tracks, so we saw bulldozers and backhoes along the way, and that was exciting. We also passed the NCSU Veterinary school, and saw their cows outside.
It was about a 20 minute ride to Cary, and when we stopped, Chad said, "Can we go again???" and I was all, "Oh, sure, sweetie, one more time," so he thinks he got two rides. Sucker. Then we went about another 15 minutes to Raleigh, during which we snacked on pretzels, where Andy met us to drive us back home.
At Raleigh, a very important first happened- it was the first time Chad announced that he had to use the bathroom when he was out in public with just me, so he had his first toilet experience in a women's restroom. Exciting stuff.
All that train riding can make you hungry. We went to a local burger/brewery for a post-train feast. I really liked this place because you could order pretzel-crusted fried pickle chips, (who knew such a thing existed??) and the soda fountain had all Boylan sodas. The part that made me sad was that they also had a self-serving "Enomatic" wine machine, where you stick a card in and can choose half or full glasses of 16 different wines. I never knew Durham was cosmopolitan enough to have a restaurant with such a device, but sadly, no wine for me at the moment. I'm already planning to sneak out of the hospital within minutes of giving birth so I can partake in some Enomatic wine action.
As for Chad, he liked the pickle chips and milk, but didn't eat much of his "Puppy Dog."
And here are a few more cute pictures:

He hit the ball, then threw the bat and ran the bases.

And here is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous pictures I have ever taken of him:

He wanted to wear his Lightning McQueen robe for breakfast, but the hood had to be up, and you don't walk downstairs to breakfast without your trusty bat--- a pancake could be waiting to attack!