2019 Life Logs, Day 26: Fun Day with Jonah and Ollie
Date: Saturday, January 26, 2019
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day; High 33, Low 24 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It was a fun day with Jonah and Ollie. The temperature was barely above freezing, but it was sunny and felt a little warmer than that. The boys came home from their overnight next door around 11 am and reported that they had a great time. But it was obvious that a good night’s sleep was not part of the great time. Ollie was uncharacteristically grumpy and Jonah was just tired. He and Joey slept on the living room floor and shared an air mattress and blankets. Evidently there was a constant battle for the blankets and Jonah lost, leaving him very cold. He said he kept waking up because he was so cold, so tonight I made sure he has plenty of blankets. Hopefully a good night’s rest tonight will make-up for last night.
Since Ollie was so grumpy, I decided to arrange a playdate for Jonah so he didn’t have to argue with Ollie all day. In the afternoon, Jonah went to play with his friend Luke and I took Ollie to the school playground that is across from the public library where he managed to play all by himself and have a great time. He had on camouflage pants and a matching shirt, so he decided that the playground was the perfect place for Army training.
Everything became an obstacle course and he ran and played,
with me for an audience, for over an hour.
Then we went into the library to check-out a 3 pm children’s program about China. Originally Ollie wanted to go as he really wants to go to China to see the Panda ‘kindergarten’ at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. But when he saw that the ‘presentation’ was really just doing art projects, he chose to search for books about pandas and play with the wooden trains. While searching for panda books, I saw a book on display entitled “Spirals” which invited me to read it. My love of spirals in nature runs deep. Nautilus shells and fern fiddle heads are my very favorites, so I decided to share this with Jonah and Ollie and get a couple of books explaining the math that creates these spirals. Ollie and I then walked over to Main Street to get a hot chocolate to drink while reading about pandas. When we finished, we got a hot chocolate to go for Jonah, picked him up, and returned to the Goldstones to play outside with Molly and Joey for the last half-hou of daylight. Then we traveled on to my house for the night. I fixed dinner while Jonah listened to music and Ollie took a very long hot bath. After dinner we read about spirals in nature and pandas. I was very excited when the book explaining that the pattern that produces spirals in nature are the result of Fibonacci numbers was of great interest to Jonah. He loved holding my very favorite nautilus shell while reading about it and that led to a conversation about the architectural spirals in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Ollie was tuned into this conversation, but he was also busy telling Jonah and I more facts about pandas than either of us had ever thought about. It was a fun evening.
