To table or not to table?

A year or two ago when I was talking with my sister about how my latest obsession was about getting a train table, she told me that her kids preferred to just build tracks on the ground and we didn't need one. I ignored her thinking her kids were different since everyone loves a train table. After hemming and hawing a few more months, I got one, set it up and Parker loved it. Ah ha! I was right. Train tables are a necessity! Everyone who visited just loved them. But after a while, Parker stopped playing with the train table. At first, he stopped playing with trains, but when the bug hit him again, the table was too small and too confining for his imagination and engineering. He preferred to build them on the floor. But he always wanted to "save them" until tomorrow. On a train table this is fine. On the floor of your incredibly small dining room/living room, this is a problem. Without the luxury of a play room (enjoyed by those same different kids), I told him to clean up the tracks. After a while, I noticed Parker was not building tracks anymore. From time to time, I would sit down at the train table and say, "You wanna build a track with me?" "Nah," he would say and go off to do something else.

So, today, I put all the tracks, bridges, risers, trains, and other such nonsense in a big bin, moved the train table to the garage, and put the bin upstairs in our room where we had recently re-arranged to make more play space. Then I told Parker what I did. He was thrilled and immediately built a complex, double decker, loopy, track all over the floor.

Score: 3 points Rachel, 278 points Rachel's sister.