Some amount of anxiety

I know I'm going to get into trouble if I call my child a weirdo, so I'll call him a "unique and puzzling little lad" instead.

Charley's personality met with his current age is a fertile ground for breeding anxiety. Or anxieties. Recently, there's been the carousel fear, the miniature horse fear and the digging up dinosaur bones fear (this is related to an exhibit at the children's museum here, not just a totally random dinosaur bone fear...).

Before I continue, I will say that I was the exact same child. So when I call him 'my little weirdo', I do so with love in my heart. My mother likes to describe my younger self as "walking with her arms out and stiff, in a version of fight or flight pose (flight winning every time), ready to flee should anyone look at her sideways". She also likes to tell the story of my first tooth falling out and my subsequent spaz-to-end-all-spazzes, freak-out extraordinaire. Of course, my parents had told me that if I didn't brush my teeth that 'they would fall out'. (I've been very conscious of this and instead told Charley that his teeth will turn black. He brushes with abandon and always says "Mommy, they're all sparkly and white!"). Har har har.

Clearly, the genetic code for anxious child runs strong in this family. (Sam, at this point, is immune to such trivial things as 'worries'.)

All this to say that occasionally (ie: every five minutes) while watching Thomas on tv, the anxiety centre in Charley's brain will fire up. Perhaps Thomas is in an especially sticky situation. It could be that Cranky the Crane is speaking harshly to one of the trains. Or it might be that episode where Iron 'arry and Iron Bert pretend to be ghosts. And don't even get me started on the clown episode.

Whatever it is, it results in television watching that looks a little something like this:

and this:

Yes, there is a tiny slit in the fingers that allows one eyeball a marginal view of the screen. But full vision? Too much.

Come to think of it, this is exactly how I watch scary movies.

I love Sam in these shots. He's not going to waste any valuable train plundering time. 'Smash while the smashing's good' says he.