When DS was that age, we went with mama's poorly, the hospital is making sure she's better. You get special Daddy time and can see me every day. This was an emergency admission though, so couldn't prepare him for it.

Wrt machines, when he turned up I bigged them up as the cool helpful robots, look what they do! He didn't worry beforehand about it cos he didn't know, and cos I was excited about it, he was too.