2024 Life Logs, Day 81: Happy 12th Birthday to Ollie
Date: Thursday, March 21, 2024
Weather: Sunny and Windy; High Temp 40, Low 27 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA
Happy Birthday to Oliver Preston Goldstone! Ollie and Simon Ackerman were born on the same day twelve years ago in adjacent rooms at Falmouth Hospital. And now they live in the same neighborhood and can walk to school together.
This morning, Simon’s mom, Kate, took a great photo of the boys carrying their saxophones to school and this evening we had a family dinner at the Goldstones to celebrate. I went over to take Simon and Ollie to soccer practice at 5 pm, but they had both decided to skip practice. So, I took Ollie to Falmouth Pet Center to talk with Doug, the owner, about adding more fish to Ollie’s aquarium. Doug is always willing to share information and answer Ollie’s many questions. At Doug’s suggestion, Ollie is going to add the new fish after he has given the aquarium a good maintenance cleaning this weekend.
The Goldstone boys always get to dictate what we have for dinner on their birthdays.
Tonight, it was homemade sushi and chocolate cake. When I arrived for dinner, Heather and Jed were both busy making rolls.
Very impressive! There was sushi grade tuna and salmon, calamari, scallions, avocado, and cucumber. The rolls were beautiful, delicious, and cost about half what it would have cost as take-out.
Sam had to leave by 7 pm to go to soccer practice. He got to eat, but he missed the opening of presents and cake. I gave Ollie a subscription to Mark Rober’s Crunch Labs which are build-it-yourself engineering kits you receive each month.
Mark Rober was a NASA engineer who is now a YouTuber and just so much fun. He started Crunch Labs to get kids to think, play, and build like an engineer. Heather recommended this purchase and Ollie was delighted. Evidently both of Ollie’s grandmothers think alike as Grammy Marti sent him a similar kit from a different company. Jed gave Ollie a huge box of gray Legos. I asked why just gray, and Heather explained that she is forever being recruited to sort through the hundreds of Legos for gray bricks to build ships. But the biggest present of all was that a decision was finally made tonight on the lawn tractor to purchase. This is something he has wanted since he was two and it was his combined Christmas and birthday gift from Santa and mom and dad.
Lighting the birthday candles on the cake was quite the affair tonight. Ollie started lighting the candles with a grill lighter, but every time he lit a candle, Jonah would run through the dining room and blow it out. Jonah finally grabbed the lighter and hid it, so Ollie went to get a grill lighter that looked more like a mini blow torch. 
That did the trick and we finally got to sing Happy Birthday. 
And before I left, I shared the Welcome to Crunch Labs video that I received after subscribing where you learn how to make the best paper airplane ever. When I left, Ollie was adjusting the wings and the trim to make the plane do loops. He was one happy 12 year old tonight.
The rest of my day was spent in Hyannis getting an eye exam and ordering new glasses and then heading on to Costco to get a few items I needed. Tomorrow the only thing I have on my to do list is to go to my PT evaluation. Finally, I get to start PT post back surgery.
