The Holiday Train Show at NY Botanical Garden

For the last two years, our family has visited the Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden, and with our visit this year, I think we can officially call this one of our family traditions. In typical fashion, the Holiday Train Show was a really impressive thing to see. There were replicas of all of NYC’s famous landmarks, like The Empire State Building, Coney Island, Grand Central Station, and The Brooklyn Bridge, as well as replicas of historic brownstones we walk past regularly in Harlem. Jameson was most excited to see the Thomas the Train replica riding through the exhibit, although he was stumped when we told him he couldn’t actually hold the train.Lucky for him, one of the trains needed a repair, and we came along just as one of “the conductors” was taking it to be fixed. She kindly allowed Jameson to take an up-close look at it, and his “looking” quickly turned into his grabbing the train from her to play with it on the ground. He even tried to sit on it at one point, and that’s when we knew it was time to give the train back and move on. Smh.

Fortunately, there was lots more to see…Love seeing these two together. :-)And it’s crazy how the beauty of this exhibit never gets old.My mom also joined us for the visit, which made Jameson a very happy boy.And perhaps the most amazing thing about visiting the Holiday Train Show is seeing how Jameson’s reactions evolve as he gets older. I can easily remember him two years ago as a baby who could not yet stand on his own being mesmerized as the trains whizzed by. And I can remember him last year as a 1.5-year-old, not having quite the words to communicate all that he saw, so his go-too phrase was “chooo chooo!” And this year, he was even more aware of the trains, bridges, and streams of water throughout the exhibit, calling out so many things by color and name.

I’m realizing that this is one of the best parts of traditions — that by doing the same things every year, we not only get the present moments, but we also get to relive some of those precious previous experiences too. I didn’t grow up with lots of family traditions (which doesn’t bother me), but I’m happy to be creating some for my young family.