Playing Cars and Trucks

I can play most anything with the boys. I can play with Playdough, paint pictures, create contraptions, collect sticks in the park, dig in the sand, do puzzles, play board games, build with blocks and play in the pool, but the one thing that I do not enjoy playing is "cars and trucks."  Maybe this is why I was blessed with two boys.  Somewhere out in the universe it is my task to learn to enjoy playing with cars and trucks.

But what is playing "cars and trucks" really?  It is not like the things I enjoyed doing as a little girl.  It is not dressing up dolls in different outfits- I can do that. It is not like playing house or doctor's office- these I can do as well.  Cars and trucks are simply a bunch of vehicles, in a pile on my living room floor (that will not be cleaned up at the end of the day by anyone other than me). They do not speak to me. They do not entice me like a new box of markers, fresh paint or even the acres of sand at the beach. Cars and trucks just go back and forth.  They cannot be built into cities and parks like blocks or Duplos.  They just go and then they stop. But, to Cooper, they are much more than "just" anything. They are where he acts out his fears, where he experiences power, where he makes sense of his world. They are fun.


I have tried, really. I have created traffic jams from one end of the room to the other, made parking garages filled with rows and rows of various kinds of vehicles and have had races galore and yet, I still do not enjoy playing cars and trucks.  Maybe I am not supposed to enjoy it. Maybe this is the burden I must carry as a mom of boys. Who knows.  What I do know is that I cannot wait until Tucker is a bit older and he can play these car and truck games with Cooper. He can build parking garages, traffic jams and have races until the sun goes down and I can just sit back and ENJOY watching them play "cars and trucks."