Drivin' or Cryin'

GrandBoy wants to drive. Unfortunately, he's only 19 months old.

This is frustrating for him - frustrating to the point of tears and toddler-fits sometimes. His vocabulary is coming along, but he hasn't mastered the word for driving. Or cars. Or trucks. Or any vehicle that catches his eye. All of those things are lumped under one double-barrelled word: Doo-doose.

Doo-doose. Not sure of the spelling, but we all know what it means when he sees a big truck on the freeway or a tractor in a field. Doo-doose! And we really know what it means when we're trying to get him into or out of a car, or when he's upstairs pointing at the door leading to the garage, and he spits out: Doo-doose!

Now, doo-doose - er, driving - to Liam mostly means sitting in the driver's seat moving the steering wheel back and forth, or trying to push keys into the ignition, or pulling the visors and lighted mirrors up and down, pushing every single button on the dashboard, opening and closing each storage compartment. Yet, he never wants to pass up an opportunity to have full run of the front seat of a car. Perhaps it's because he's always tied down in his car seat well away from the front.

A few weeks ago we were at my nephew's wedding at a Florida resort, and poor GrandBoy lost it every time he saw a golf cart. And there were lots of golf carts. Last weekend we went apple-picking, and while he enjoyed that adventure, GrandBoy was completely beside himself when he got to sit in the driver's seat of a big blue tractor.

We figure he's got a bright future as a race-car driver. Or a trucker. Or a farmer. Long may he doo-doose!