Birthday Dates COVID Style

Birthday dates this year with the grandsons was an opportunity to finally use the Grandparent Paddle-passes we had ordered the children for Christmas. The boys' reactions were so different. Seven-year-old Ellis begged to go closer to the spray of the fountain,

 Ellis' day was sunny

Matteo's day threatened rain

while two days later, nine-year-old Matteo put up his  umbrella just in case a few raindrops landed on him.
















Fortunately, for this second journey around Bower Ponds, the rain held off beyond a few spits. Awesome to see baby fluff balls swimming with their duck parents

Goldeneye babies rest on the dock

 Twenty-one teenaged geese swam with a parent [caregiver?] at each end to keep them in line. A muskrat sat near the bulrushes calmly chewing the fresh green leaves. Grandpa and I couldn't find the nest we had seen the first day, close to the edge of the water.













To avoid sitting in a restaurant, we chose a take-out lunch. It seemed funny to us to eat McDonalds pancakes at home. Grandpa's pancakes are so much better, in my opinion. But these came with their own generous container of pancake syrup, and were eagerly gobbled up by
each boy and Grandpa.

Ellis asked to play at our house with the LEGO, and didn't call it girly LEGO this year. The boys hadn't been over for at least six months, because of our being away, and the isolation situation, so Grandma's LEGO was a novelty again. His imagination took off, and he adapted a cake in the Birthday Party set and set it in front of Teddy, the hero of the latest story for the grandchildren.

Seven tiny animals gaze up at the tall candle on the cake

Ellis knew Teddy would like to ride down the banister.

Matteo took the entire salon set apart (it being the most complicated set) and put it back together lickety-split. My job was to find pieces, but he usually grabbed them faster than I could find them. 







I was impressed that he would run back up three flights of stairs and find our unit by himself, to retrieve his unfinished mango juice.
He knew how to text his parents, on my phone, that he was on his way home. He's growing up fast, and is a tall nine-year old.

Matteo

When the boys got hungry again, they sampled their uncle's birthday cake, and watched a tall sparkler burn down in the dark of the laundry room.

                                                       







That was cool, as we didn't see fireworks this year.

Happy birthday, Matteo and Ellis!