Give me some place to go, don't give me train rides

There are a few things that I find hard to figure out. Here's one now.

Many suburban shopping centres/collections of factory outlets feature a dinky little Thomas the Tank Engine with coaches which runs around a tiny part of the shopping centre for about three minutes and then one's son gets cross because it's over already.

This costs $3.00. Per child.

Alternatively, on any Sunday of the year, the same parent can drive/walk to his or her local train station, and for $2.50, buy a ticket enabling one to travel anywhere on the entire metropolitan rail network with as many children as one can reasonably manage.

Last weekend, while Cherub was having an unusually lengthy afternoon sleep, Bundle and I caught the train to Flinders Street, walked over to Federation Square to admire the ferris wheel, looked for boats on the Yarra, admired the view from the bridge, got on the next train, which included a not unexciting (for a two year old) trip through the loop, and happily headed home again.

Bundle was thrilled every single time we went through a level crossing, and excited almost beyond belief when we saw some diggers on a building site near the train line. More importantly, the trip was long enough that he was saying 'are we there yet' with three stations to go and he was perfectly happy to get off the train when we finally found our station.

And he was still telling people about this the next day.

Let me just mention again that this was all for the bargain basement price of $2.50. Mysteriously, however, in the middle of a perfectly pleasant Sunday afternoon, the trains were less than one fifth full, but had we been at one of those shopping centres we probably would have had to queue up to get on the dinky little three minute train ride.

I can not figure this out.

I also cannot figure out how we ran a party at home for eight children aged 6 months to nearly five years for two whole hours and I cannot come up with enough decent anecdotes for even a fairly brief post. So, without further ado...

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY CHERUB!