Lost in translation

Today Kai and I went to the airport. Somewhere along the line Kai has mixed up the words 'aeroplane' and 'sky'. So in an attempt to rectify this I took him to see some aeroplanes close up, taking off and landing.

An hour long bus journey later, we wound up at Terminal 3 and I realised I had no idea how to get to a good vantage point of the runway. After asking for directions in the model plane shop, we had a 40 minute walk to a little hotel with a beer garden overlooking the runway. It was worth the walk, for the view, and all the geeky looking intensely serious binocular-and notepad-bearing plane spotters standing expectantly around.

Several planes flew in breathtakingly close, and Kai got very excited, shouting 'sky! Sky!' with me repeating 'aeroplane! Aeroplane!'

After several rounds of this, each time Kai looking at me as though his poor confused mother didn't know what a 'sky' was, He seemed to get it.

By the time we eventually left it had been a long day for Kai and he feel asleep in the buggy clutching the toy plane I'd bought him in the model shop.

He woke up when we got home, held out his toy plane, and with a beaming smile said

'SKY!'