#4 of Kaylynn's Top Ten

#4 is brought to you by:

AIRPLANES

I don't really know where to begin. She loves airplanes. She always has. From the moment she first saw something flying in the sky, she fell in love. I have to believe part of her love comes from her weekly trips to the local airport. Grandma and Pappap take her when they go to Pappap's weekly radio meetings. In addition to the airplanes, she also gets to scope out the helicopters.

She started nice and easy. We'd be outside taking a walk and she'd hear one. She'd immediately look to the sky to see where the airplane was. And she NEVER failed to find them. She'd point and say "airplane!".

As time went on, she began spotting them without hearing them. We could be driving somewhere and we'd suddenly hear "airplane!". Even if we didn't see it, we could turn around and see where she was pointing.

She has eagle eyes when it comes to spotting planes. Seriously, you don't understand how good she is. There have been times that we'd hear her say the magic word and not believe her. We'd be scanning and scanning and scanning - all for naught because we saw nothing. But when we looked at where Kaylynn was pointing, there would be the airplane, streaking across the sky.

Case in point. We were up in Portland visiting some great friends and we stopped at a local grocery store. The girls (H and J) ran into the store to get a few things. KP and I stayed in the car. Suddenly, we hear the word: "airplane". We saw nothing. So we turned around and saw where she was pointing. Still nothing. It wasn't until I really squinted and looked hard that I finally saw it. The plane, which was no bigger than a grain of salt (and, coincidentally, must have been flying over Los Angeles at the time - it was that far away) was moving exactly where she was pointing. We couldn't believe it. We came to the conclusion that NORAD was obsolete - at least while Kaylynn was on the look-out.

She continued to progress to the point where we'd be in the house and she'd hear one flying overhead. She'd immediately stop and look up. Of course she couldn't see anything (because of the roof - duh), but she knew what that noise was. And since she had seen and heard the helicopters at the airport, she could distinguish between helicopters flying overhead and airplanes flying overhead (no lie).

And she never gets confused. She knows what the difference between a bird and a plane is. When we go out at night - every night - to check on the moon (to make sure it's still there), she sees the lights from the plane. She knows those lights are airplanes and not stars. And it's easier to see the planes at night - there are so many of them. Our mission is to say goodnight to the moon, but we end up pointing at EVERY plane before heading inside.

I don't know what the future has in store (for our Aggie), but if becoming a veterinarian isn't in the future, maybe becoming a pilot is!