Lift Up Your Hearts!

Jonathan is never cold. Our pool was a Florida-warm 77 degrees for his visit, but it didn’t take long for the rest of us to feel chilled when the sun was not shining. Not so Jonathan, who never flinched when entering the water, and was still happy after three hours’ immersion. This is the same child I watched run outside on a bitterly cold Pittsburgh winter day, shoeless and wearing only a diaper. His only unhappiness was with the killjoy adults who brought him back inside. Looking at Jonathan’s portly body, one might think his imperviousness to cold was related to excessive insulation. However, I have plenty of that and it doesn’t keep me warm in the pool. Infants, I have learned, are born with brown adipose tissue (“brown fat cells”), which unlike the white variety actually produce heat. This phenomenon is also seen in small mammals that live in cold environments, and in hibernating animals. I venture the claim that most of Jonathan’s plethora of fat cells are of the brown kind! Brown adipose tissue also helps protect against obesity, which may explain why so many mothers have told Heather stories of their own children, now grown and thin, who when young were as large as Jonathan. (More)

I just heard from Heather and Jonathan, who have safely navigated car and plane and bus and foot and are home in Pittsburgh. I didn't get any details because they are having problems with their phones at the moment. We miss their cheerful faces and voices!

What a memory Jonathan has. We haven't mentioned pretzels at all this week, but in the car on the way to the airport he suddenly declaimed, "Airplane, pretzels!" Obviously he was more impressed than most people with the in-flight food.

You might guess that Jonathan is the son of two engineers by the fact that he frequently peruses their Dilbert calendar, laughing heartily. An incident today confirms the inheritance. He is sleeping in Janet's room, and she has some clear plastic file drawers filled with very interesting items that would not be good for him to investigate. Jonathan is in general an obedient child, but rather than expose him continually to temptation I ran a strip of duct tape along the drawers so that they could not be opened. Heather assures me that she never mentioned the words in his presence in relation to the drawers, but tonight he walked over to them, looked at the silver-colored stripe, and commented, "duct tape." Any 22-month old who knows duct tape when he sees it is well on his way.

I once read that a child should learn "at the rate determined by her own happy hunger." (I believe the quotation is from John Ciardi, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.) It is delightful to observe Jonathan’s voracious appetite. (More)

Great-Grandma Landeen came for lunch yesterday, and Jonathan had fun playing trains with her, and reading the new books that she brought him. I had been worried about an "elderly lady" slipping on the train track pieces that covered most of the family room floor, but she nimbly navigated them and without hesitation sat down on the floor to play!

On Friday Jonathan and Heather had accompanied us the park for our regular running date. While Dad-o ran, the rest of us walked around the trail. Sometimes Jonathan is enthusiastic about running, and we thought he might enjoy it here, but he was not in the mood. In fact, he wanted to be carried from the beginning. With encouragement, he walked about 0.7 miles before I gave him a piggy back ride the rest of the distance to the playground. (More)

Jonathan is not accustomed to having to leave the house before 7 a.m. for church, but he managed to be only one of the Seven Dwarves—Sleepy but not Grumpy. He had no comment on Father Tom’s sermon, having chosen that time to be out of the room, but happily received his blessing at the altar rail during the Eucharist. (More)

Having learned that it is now possible to ride along the bike trail from our neighborhood to the bridge over I-4, Heather wanted to make the journey. We have only two bicycles, and no bike seat nor bike trailer for Jonathan to ride in, and no helmet for him to wear. So he was sadly disappointed, because when he heard the words, “bike ride,” he became very excited: “Jonathan go bike ride!” (More)

Jonathan has several pictures of Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows that he likes to look at, so we were excited to give him the opportunity to see the real windows at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in nearby Winter Park. Much to our disappointment, many of his favorites were unavailable, being prepared for a special exhibition in New York. So he was unable to see Girl Picking Gourds, one of his favorites, and see the transformation of Butterfly Window between transmitted and reflected light at the push of a button. However, not all of "his" windows were missing, and his eyes lit up when he encountered Young Woman at a Fountain. He delighted, also, in "Tombment!" (The Entombment) particularly since that exhibit featured several studies leading up to the finished window. (More)

One of the joys I remember from Heather and Janet’s childhood is hearing them quote back and forth to each other sections of dialogue from plays and movies, from The Pirates of Penzance to Henry V. Jonathan has started already. No, he’s not quite ready for Gilbert and Sullivan, let alone Shakespeare, but his conversations are replete with quotations from his favorite books, particularly Dr. Seuss. “no, Pat, no sit on that!” “hop on pop, stop!” (Hop on Pop), “in a box, wif a fox” (Green Eggs and Ham), “boom, boom Mister Brown makes thunder”) (Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?), “bread and milk and blackberries for supper” (Peter Rabbit), and many others I can’t identify. Since coming to Florida he has increased his repertoire, having discovered The Cat in the Hat on our bookshelves. That is his favorite story request now, and we are already hearing “up, up, up, fish!” “look at me, look at me now,” "have to know how," and more.

Yesterday we also went to the neighborhood playground, Heather and I walking, and Jonathan sometimes pulling, mostly riding in, the little red wagon which had last seen service on Independence Day as the water wagon for the Greater Geneva Grande Award Marching Band. (More)

The pool continues to be a big draw here, with Jonathan swimming as much and as often as he can convince someone to swim with him. Ah, the delight in having time and opportunity to observe the learning process! Since the YMCA has regrettably abandonned the wonderful Infant Swim and Gym program that we enjoyed, Jonathan is not as competent in the water as his mother and aunt were at 22 months of age. But he is taking full advantage of this opportunity to narrow that gap. (More)

Jon has graciously lent us Heather and Jonathan for a week! They arrived yesterday. I met them as they were descending the escalator; Jonathan saw me and shouted, “Grandma!” quickly followed by “Dad-o?” We reassured him that he would see Dad-o after we drove home. On the way he announced, “Aunt Jan't 'Pan!” He knows we’re associated with Aunt Janet, but he can’t see her this trip because she’s in Japan. (More)

It was a triathlon, in an out of shape, over 50 sort of way.

We still haven't been able to fill up the cars since the gas panic Wednesday night. Not that we tried very hard, but the one station we pulled into on our way home from choir rehearsal Thursday night was out of gas. (It's not that our choir meets two nights per week; we sing with two churches.) So instead of driving to the park for our thrice-weekly run, on Friday we rode our bicycles.

1. Ride to the park.
2. Run (or walk/run in my case)
3. Ride home.
4. Jump in the pool.

Works for me. (More)

Even before Hurricane Katrina, when we were paying around $2.55 for a gallon of gasoline, the adjustments made necessary by the increased price fueled many a news story. From the tone of the reports, one would think we were in a crisis of terrible proportions, but their content was encouraging. People now had to think twice, it was said, before making a trip by car. They were combinging trips, carpooling, using public transportation, walking, and riding bikes. All of which looks like good news to me.

News reporters, it seems, are most enthusiastic when reporting bad news, and love to expand problems into disasters. I don't believe you can call our fuel problems a crisis, even post-Katrina, any more than I believe we have an obesity crisis, although most Americans are undeniably overfed and underexercised.

Nonetheless, I will use the media's terms and make the encouraging prediction that if we don't interfere with the process too much, the energy crisis may go a long way toward curing the obesity crisis.