Little boys and wooden toys

There's something timeless about little wooden toys. Whenever we visit with my wife's parents, Kevin (our son) gets a chance to play with a couple old-fashioned wooden toys. They're not really old, perhaps 35 years, but there's a little fire engine and one of those phones you pull along on a string. They might have some plastic bits, but the bodies of them are wood. They've lasted longer than I've been around, and been played with by probably a dozen little kids, but they're still in great shape. I doubt that Kevin's plastic toys are going to fare any better, and I suspect that most of those toys won't be passed on to the next generation.

Kevin's currently doesn't have a favorite toy. Or rather, he does, but it's more of a category. He loves to play with his "uck". It's as close as he can come to saying "truck", but really means anything with wheels. Cars, trains, trucks, semis - they're all "ucks" to him, and he bounces from one to another without pause.

We're not sure where this came from. We didn't sit down every day and say "Truck". We didn't push trucks around and say "Vvvvrrrrmmm" and make other rumbling noises. We do now, but this mild mania certainly wasn't planned. It's cute, and only mildly distracting to hear "uck! uck!" every time we pass a semi on the highway.