Trucks

One of my boys' favorite activities is playing in the car, which is a shame, because I hardly ever let them do it. I used to let Jett do it all of the time, but I'm a million times busier these days and am not content to sit on the sidewalk while the kids bang around in there, leaving footprints all over the seats and handprints all over the windows. So when our friends in the 'burbs invited us to join them at their neighborhood "Touch a Truck" event, we hurried right over.

Cue the lights, cue the music, the heavens just opened up, right over a mall parking lot.

The mall parking lot was full of more trucks than I have ever seen at one time in my entire life. Fire trucks, dump trucks, tow trucks, ambulances, snow plows, garbage trucks, trucks I don't even know the name of, and even a helicopter. Doors were flung open and the kids were all over the trucks, climbing in and out, sitting in the seats, flipping the switches, honking the horns, honking the horns, honking the horns.....

The horns were a problem. It was so noisy that Jett kept his hands over his ears, and would not take them off even to climb in or out of a truck. Those trucks are so big. BIG, people. I had no idea how big they were. A street cleaning truck doesn't look that huge from my third-story window. Climbing into every truck required climbing up at least two steps, and those steps felt taller than my shoulder.

Anyway, we clearly needed a solution for Jett, which was to stick a wad of tissue into each of his hears. Finally he was "hands-free" ad we could get down to the business of climbing. He started to relax. He started to get in to it. So much so that he stood quiet and still in a crowd of people under the blazing sun for 10 minutes - without even asking for a snack - waiting for the firemen to start their demonstration of how they rescue someone from an overturned car.

(Did I mention that Jett wants to be a fireman when he grows up? But not just a regular fireman. He wants to be a fat fireman. Go figure).

But as much fun as Jett had at this event, I think Kai really got the most out of it. He just looked so fantastically satisfied at it all. He spent 10 minutes in one truck without any other kids asking to come in, and he was completely content. At the end of the day he and Jett were both flithy- from the pavement and the sweat and the dirt on those huge tires that they had to keep running their hands over. Their little legs were indented with grids from the steps they climbed up and down - a foot on the first step, a shin on the other, careful, careful. They were in heaven....in heaven in trucks at the mall.