To me, Thomas and his friends of Sodor are simply classic. My brother used to have a Wooden Thomas the Train set that we put hours and hours of play time into. Now, 20 years later, Thomas is still around with even more to offer.

When the opportunity arose to review the Thomas Wooden Railway Talking Railway Series Farewell at the Docks set, I thought this would be the perfectlove Christmas gift for my son. Or even my son and daughter combined. I was going to test it out myself to share with you all until Christmas. Instead, I couldn’t stand the anticipation of them opening it and trying it themselves, so much to my kids’ enjoyment we put it together the night it arrived. They it. I decided what I am going to do instead is purchase more pieces and have a giant track set up around the Christmas Tree Christmas morning, courtesy of  Ol’ St. Nick.

On to our thoughts. First, I would like to say that this toy is not recommended for children under 3, and many of you know that my daughter is under 3. She is 17 months. We do not let her play with this unsupervised. When we are with her however she has just as much fun as Ryan does driving the trains around the track and filling and un-filling the “Party Supplies” or cargo.  Ryan has enjoyed creating several different shaped tracks and he loves using the crank on “Cranky” to load and unload the cargo which in this set happens to be “Party Supplies”.  As Thomas or Spencer travel past Cranky and Sir Topham Hatts’ station the child can push the button where Sir Topham Hatt will recognize each engine.

From a moms’ perspective I love that not only does this let their imaginations soar but it is excellent for the hand eye coordination. I watched Ryan piece together the tracks in a fashion that still makes it go around and watched Olivia put the cargo in the trailer just so. I love that it’s not too noisy and they use their own words when pretending to be one of trains. I love that it completely comes apart not only for the set to be put away nicely but for a fresh start the next day.

For more information you can view this set and other fabulous educational but fun toys at Learning Curve. There you will find further details in general and where to purchase.

A couple months ago, during a warm summer month, I won (through twitter) an assortment of Boogie Wipes right from the fine Boogie Wipes people. I took them out of the box and placed them on Olivia’s dresser knowing the time would come that I would be able to use them out, but thankful it was not quite time. Well, my friends, the time has come. Olivia gets the runniest of noses when she is cutting teeth. She just so happens to have 4 molars making their way through, causing the inner bear to come out of my precious 15 month old. Along with that came the unavoidable runny nose. Thankfully I remembered the Boogie Wipes on the dresser. Not only will Olivia let me wipe her nose now, but they help! They really really help, and it doesn’t matter how many times I have to wipe her nose, she doesn’t complain. In fact, she seems to really like getting her nose wiped. Not only that, but there is no raw-ness, or redness of the skin because these babies are gentle. So, THANK YOU Boogie Wipes!

Here she is with a dry nose and do I dare say a happy face? She’s never happy when she’s teething!