I believe this playcenter face paint job was a dragon, but since we’re in NZ I’ll call him a Taniwha, a mythical monstery creature of Maori tales. In our family he’s an incessantly talking Taniwha. He’s in the phase of childhood where he will say the same exact thing dozens of times apparently without tiring, until he gets some sort of parental acknowledgment. “Those are little waves, Mom. Mom, those are little waves. Those are little waves, Mom.” He said that particular one 15 times (I counted) before I laughed. “Yes, those are little waves, Milo.”
The problem is that after I manage a “Yup, Milo, that’s true,” or something to that effect, he moves on to the next broken record phase and hangs up there until he extracts another verbal prompt from Mommy. He wasn’t early to talk and I remember friends admonishing me to enjoy that pre-verbal phase, because once he started talking all I’d crave was quiet. They were right.

We’re also in the train track/bridge building phase, and I hope this one lasts a long time. First he uses all his curved track pieces to make a spiral, then the straight ones to make a runway, and last the train bridge goes over whatever random stretch of track most suits. No worries about connecting dead ends. This morning he spent a good half hour building decorated auxiliary bridges over a straight stretch of track. Later he hopped on his bike and bade me farewell. “Bye, I going work, ‘zining bridges.” Chip off the old block.