After the first hour of the tour (during which Ian sat calmly in his seat, impressively), we got off downtown for lunch. We discovered that Ian no longer likes to be in the restaurant high chairs, he wants "big chair", and is much happier with a booster seat:
We had to wait a while for the bus to come back around, so Ian played near Pack Place. He enjoyed meeting the pig and turkey statues (although they were "hot, hot, hot!"):
And best of all on this hot day, playing in the fountain. Just touching the water:
A little splashing:
A little splashing:
Testing out what it's like to put his head under the fountain:
Improvising -- he knows that "kicking" is something he likes to do in the pool, but clearly the water wasn't deep enough here. So to perform the requisite kicking involved in water play, he leaned on his kick-like-a-donkey skill, learned from one of our Eric Carle books:
By the time he was done, he was completely soaked.
So we found a shady spot in the grass to change his diaper and clothes, and he relaxed a bit with Daddy:
But it's hard to avoid silliness for long:
Fortunately he was able to find some sticks to play with while we waited for the bus:
We got back on the bus for the last 45 minutes of the ride. Ian was getting tired and was not so content to sit nicely this time. He wandered from seat to seat for a while, occasionally having a little fit when I wouldn't let him walk around freely. Eventually he discovered a spot behind the driver's seat over the front wheel that he liked. As I sat on the seat behind him, I could see his head start bobbing as he fell asleep. Every time I tried to get him up into my lap, he protested and got back down to his perch. So when he fell asleep, we ended up with this:
And he slept, with me supporting his head, for the last 15 minutes of the tour.
Ian's last day in Asheville was kind of rough. Thursday evening he suddenly developed a very severe diaper rash, which made diaper changes very painful (literally for him, emotionally for us -- Doug in particular declared himself traumatized). By Friday night, he was feverish, and started saying that his ears hurt (how nice to have a child who is capable of telling you what's wrong!). So Saturday morning we headed to the local urgent care center. The first nurse we saw seemed skeptical, because he no longer had a fever (we had just given him Advil) and, although he said his ears hurt when she asked him, he also agreed that his neck and nose hurt when she prompted him. Well, he showed her. The nurse practitioner who saw him promptly diagnosed him with an ear infection in both ears, and we started him on antibiotics. There were a few hours when Ian was listless with fever, but for the most part all of this didn't slow him down much.
To avoid a stressful rush to get packed and out of our cottage Sunday morning, we decided that I would drive home with Ian after dinner Saturday, so that he would sleep most of the time. This would give Doug the freedom to finish packing and cleaning up Sunday morning without complication (we decided to bring both cars on the trip at the last minute, and it turned out to give us a lot of welcome flexibility). So Ian, Lilo, and I started on Saturday evening as planned. However, the plan that Ian would sleep did not work out. To my amazement, he stayed awake almost the entire drive, into the middle of the night. He was not unhappy, just continued along with his normal string of requests and stories for hours on end. This made for a rather long trip, but we are now all home safely and taking advantage of the holiday to get unpacked and ready to return to normalcy.
All in all, a good and memorable adventure.
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