I've been traveling lately, visiting family, celebrating weddings and seeing the world through the eyes of a 4-year-old. Travel has always been fun for my wife and me, but this time it was a little different — we brought our 4-year-old granddaughter Cady (and her mother, our daughter Missy) with us to California.
When this vacation began, it was all about my wife and me, but when it ended, it was apparent that it was really all about Cady. It began with packing for the flight. We had to make sure she had enough DVDs to watch so she wouldn't get bored. She slept almost the entire flight.
When we got to San Diego, we made our way to San Clemente to visit nieces and grandnieces and made plans to go to Disneyland, a place I hadn't visited since my kids were Cady's age. Tickets now cost close to what I paid for my first house. We spent 12 hours at the park seeing all of those cartoon characters that we have come to know and love, but Cady wanted to meet the princesses. She felt that they already knew her because she watches their movies all of the time. Just before I could tell her that they may not know her, in walked Cinderella, greeting Cady just as if they had known each other all of their lives. The look on my granddaughter's face paid for the entire trip. As Cady tells it, "Cinderella really wanted to meet me."
The next day, we traveled to Legoland where everything is made of Legos. They had me so convinced that I bit down on my pizza very slowly because I was afraid that it was made of Legos, too. Cady loved this park. When all of the other children were running around, Cady had her grandmother searching the park for black Legos because she wanted to build something using black. This was supposed to be a vacation.
The best part for me was always returning to our hotel after a long day's visit to the parks. Cady learned how to use the room-to-room phone, and she would wake us up every morning around six to tell us that Mommy said it was all right to come to our room. Cady never grasped the fact that when you leave one hotel to check in to another, rooms change, and your Nonie and Poppi aren't always in the same room. My apologies to the persons now staying in room 316.
