September 23, 2012 at 9:31 pm , by Nick Shell

22 months.

My wife and I joke about the fact we hardly ever by our son any new toys.

He has six caddies full of toys that mainly consist of gifts A) from his birthday party nearly a year ago and B) from when he was first born nearly two years ago.

Between his regular daycare and his church daycare and his friends’ toys when he has play dates, Jack has daily access to several toy communities.

For the past couple of months now, Jack has had the same amount of love in his heart for fire trucks as Elmo, which is saying a lot.

The flames of his fascination are flamed even more every day at his daycare, which happens to be located right across the street from the local fire station.

Jack can do a pretty incredible impression of a fire truck by now.

I’ll be driving him home and from the back seat I’ll  hear, “Wwwwhheeeaaahhhllllwwwhhh!”

(Yes, that’s the official spelling of the sound of a fire engine.)

However, it was only just today that we finally got him his very own fire truck. You’d think it be pretty easy to find a Matchbox or Hot Wheels fire truck, but no…

Either you pay at least 7 bucks for a goofy, cartoonish-looking one, or you pay at least $25 for a giant fire truck that your son wouldn’t be able to carry around with him everywhere he goes.

Well fortunately, we were able to find the right sized and the right priced fire engine truck today at Walmart. It’s made by a brand called Maisto and the thing only cost 72 cents!

Now granted, Jack’s new fire truck is also unintentionally (?) a lowrider. And it could also pass for some weird tank thing if the ladder were a canon instead.

But hey, Jack couldn’t be more excited! All he knows is, he finally has his very own fire truck.

He is so proud of it.

When he got home, he lined it up as the leader of a parade consisting of his two Thomas the Train cars and two of my old Stomper cars from McDonald’s Happy Meals back in 1985.

Oh, and a horse and a goat. They were also part of the joyous celebration.

With Jack’s 2nd birthday coming up on November 16th, I know my parents have already hinted that they got him areal fire truck toy.

I imagine it is the kind he can roll around on the floor with the big Tonka truck they got Jack for his birthday last year.

He will be so excited to get it, too; I’m sure of it.

Something he’s been doing here recently is when he has both a small and large version of toy, one becomes the baby and the other becomes the Dada.

In other words, today we bought Jack his “baby fire truck.” His “Dada fire truck” will be arriving within the next 60 days.