Having "a blast"!

         

        “Dad, are we going to have a blast in Asheville?” said Austin while still in Washington DC.  That sounds like Austin as he probably heard the expression but was not sure what having a blast means.

Reagan Airport in Washington D.C.

            “Actually”, as Austin likes to say, Hayden and Austin came to visit this past week taking an unexpected break from preschool, work, and dreary winter while Jessica was off on a State Dept. trip to Kenya and Uganda for 10 days. Arriving at my house from the airport, Austin headed to the loft first thing to check out what toys, games, and books I had for his visit.  Candy Land caught his eye.  “Can we play now?” he wanted to know.   It was after 10 pm and it took some persuading to wait until morning to start  what was to be many Candy Land games.

“Grandma, can we play Candy Land now?” was my morning greeting the next day.  While at the breakfast table he explained it all.

“Grandma, you can be the yellow gingerbread man because yellow is your favorite color.” How does he remember that I love yellow, I wondered? 

 “I am the blue,” he said picking up another gingerbread man.  “Azul is blue in Spanish,” he told me.  Austin showed me how to pick up and discard color cards and the game began.  Austin likes to give directions and when Art and Hayden joined us he  assigned them the red and green gingerbread men.

Candy Land games

“Grandma,” he said, “when we get to the end I will share the candy with you.”  Of course, Austin is always sure he will be the winner but he also knows he should be generous...and he is.

            How quiet our lives have been without Austin. He is a chatterbox and loves trying new and different words. We were talking about someone getting hurt and Austin said to me “did you know another word for hurt is injury”?  He pronounced injureee with great deliberation.   The first morning in Asheville it rained hard. I took him in the car to the Indoor Mountain Play Lodge in nearby Arden. On the 20 minute drive Austin never stopped talking.

 “Deer sign”, he pointed out.

 “Red light, Grandma.  That means stop. But I will use my magic powers to make it turn green.”  And by the time we approached the traffic light it would turn green as he demonstrated holding up his hands and waving them like a magician to release his magic powers.

“Are we almost there?  How many more minutes?  Do they have an indoor ball pit?”

            We took off our shoes at the indoor playground and he ran off to explore and climb the jungle gyms and check out the various slides. “Check out” is the operative phrase because Austin did not rush to go down any of the slides. All around him fearless toddlers launched themselves head first down tubes and slides as anxious parents waited at the bottom to catch them. Austin is so cautious about everything just as Hayden was at his age.

Mountain Play Lodge in Arden

“Grandma,” he kept saying , “come up here” or “come down this slide with me”. This was a reminder that I’d better get back to those Yoga and exercise classes soon because the truth is I could not crawl up and around the jungle gym very nimbly. But, much to my surprise, I did get a few brownie points later in the day for whacking the whiffle ball when we had our afternoon batting practices on Black Horse Run. 

Black Horse Run whiffle ball games...

            Austin can run like the wind.  Hayden said the highlight of the trip to Asheville was running down the moving walkways in Charlotte from one end of the airport to the other with little time to make a connection.  Austin stepped up to the challenge and loved it.  When Art said to him “running is good exercise”, Austin’s response was “don’t say that, it’s annoying.”  I guess he doesn’t consider running exercise.

            Austin loves jokes now and has quite a repertoire of Knock Knock jokes he can tell by himself. His eyes light up mischievously as he starts one.

“Knock Knock….

Who’s there? 

Hoo? 

Hoo, who?  You talk like an owl.” 

More giggles and laughter. I learned that Barnes & Noble has Knock Knock joke books for kids.  I bought one for him and we took it with us every time we were out and about needing a distraction.  Next time I visit I will have to bring more new jokes to share.

            We spent a morning at the Biltmore Estate where it is unusually quiet this time of year with few tourists around. Austin was not impressed when I told him the house has 250 rooms.  All he was interested in was the swimming pool and bowling alley. What a disappointment to find no water in the enormous underground pool .  As for the bowling alley he could not try out…well, that was no fun!  He was more interested in the Italian Garden ponds that are full of giant gold fish swimming around even in winter. The greenhouses with giant sized plants and leaves bigger than Austin impressed him momentarily.

Biltmore Estate ponds

Music room in the Biltmore Estate

            Birthdays and cake were a highlight of this visit.  Hayden celebrated his birthday in Asheville and Austin’s is coming up on the 21^st.  I had told Austin I would bake a cake and he could ice it and put the candles on.  He loved it and stepped right up to help out.  Keeping the cake uneaten until dessert time was the biggest challenge.

Cake icing

            “U.S.A, U.S.A.,” yelled Austin as we sat in the stands at the Cellular Center in downtown Asheville watching the Federated Women’s Tennis championships all day Saturday.  When the Williams sisters appeared the crowd roared and Austin was right there with his red, white, and blue pompom and tooting his long blue fog horn.

Women's Federated Tennis Championships

“Go, Venus…go, Serena”, chanted Austin. He knows the tennis players as he watches the tennis channel on TV with his Dad.   But he also is a veteran of watching live professional sports events having been with his parents in Washington D.C. to baseball games and tennis tournaments.  Being a tennis player (Hayden has been giving him lessons for more than a year) he knows what the game is about and loved watching the scoreboard. He sat through two entire tennis matches and even napped partway during one but loved the crowd and the excitement.

Cheerleaders

On the walk back to the car in the late afternoon Austin surprised me with,

“Hey, how come we aren’t chatting?” 

He was right, we were walking without talking so I began to make conversation.  As we rounded a corner in downtown Asheville, Austin stopped abruptly in front of a flower bed and pointed to the crocuses coming up.

 “Hey, look at those buds,” he said.  I would have walked right by not ever having noticed them as it was dusk.

As I watched Austin walk into the Asheville airport Sunday morning confidently pulling his Lightning McQueen red carryon behind him it struck me that he is no longer a baby.  In fact at almost four years old, he is quite the world traveler having been on airplanes with his parents to Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Dallas, and Asheville.  He knows “the drill” as he stops to clean hands at each hand sanitizer.  We said our good byes at security and he followed along behind his Dad. I saw other passengers with smiles noticing the very  curly-haired little boy doing just what they were doing.  He passed through security and as I waved from behind the glass partition I knew Austin had had a real blast in Asheville!

Asheville Regional Airport