Victor and the Fire Engine

My friend Cathy has a 2-year-old named Victor. Victor is adorable and generally sweet, but he’s in that phase of life where he likes to say “No.” Sometimes he gets in a mood where he’ll say “no” to pretty much anything. “Do you want to ride in your stroller?” “No.” “Do you want to walk?” “No.” “Do you want to eat ice cream?” “No.” He balls up his little fists and sticks out his lip. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to.” Then two seconds later he’s smiling again.

Cathy and Victor came down for a little visit over the holidays, and despite the fact that he’s never been here before, one of the big selling points to get him excited about the trip was that they were going to come to The Scrap Exchange. “We’re going to go see Becky and go to The Scrap Exchange and make a fire engine. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

They got here Wednesday afternoon, New Year’s Eve, and after a bit of hanging out and catching up, we decided to head over to the store. Cathy said, “Victor, do you want to go to The Scrap Exchange?” Victor said, “Yes.” Our friend Jenny, who had made the trip with them, said, “That’s funny, that’s the only thing he’s said ‘yes’ to all day.”

Apparently the advance preparation had paid off.

So we made our way over to the Scrap and looked around the store (Cath and Jen hadn’t been here in a few years and commented on how clean and organized everything is, they were very impressed) and then moved on to the Make-N-Take room to see what we could come up with, fire engine-wise.

Cathy was an engineer for a semester in college, so I think she has some special talents in this area, and I’ve been working at events for enough years that I can usually figure out what’s going to work and what isn’t.

Knowing that masking tape would be no match for a 2-year-old, we used string and wire to hold things together. Our first effort was woefully inadequate—we gave the truck to Victor for a test drive and he went “Vrooom” and ran it across the floor and 3 of the 4 wheels fell off. So a little more engineering and we got the wheels on better and everything shored up and had Victor take it for another spin and it seemed like it would hold up.

Victor loves his fire truck and proceeded to play with it more or less continuously for the rest of the day and most of the following day. We went to Elmo’s for brunch and he brought the truck in with him. (I didn’t notice, but apparently it got a lot of looks, we should have put a little “Made at The Scrap Exchange” sign on it.)

Victor graciously agreed to pose with me to commemorate the event, but he wasn’t willing to give up his snacks.

So here we are, me with Victor’s fire truck, and Victor with his Pirate Booty.