Daddy's Day Out

Saturday was Josiah’s day out with Daddy and when two muscle men like us set out for a day of fun we always start out with a hardy breakfast.

So we shared a full platter of eggs, bacon, hash browns and waffles at our local Waffle House. By the time we cleared our plates the waitress came and asked, “Honey, would you like me to bring you a towel?” We needed it.

Next stop, Home Depot.

There we put together a little coat rack. This time I was able to avoid getting any of my fingers smashed as Josiah hammered in the nails all by himself. We finished the project and had our certificate in hand by 9:15AM
From here we went to play at Seneca Park in St. Matthews. We climbed and slid on slides and swung in the swings. Josiah seemed to have the best time throwing his little baseball across the soccer field and running after it. Some how, he almost always got to the ball faster than his Daddy.

After lots of running around we decided to make a pretend campfire with all of the sticks that we could find under the trees. Once we had a good-sized pile of sticks we roasted some pretend marshmallows. By this time we were hot and very dirty and ready for another change of venue. So, I dusted off Josiah’s shorts and headed off to the library. This was my first time to our local library, but Josiah certainly seemed to know his way around.

As soon as we got in the door he was running for the computers in the kids section. He seriously considered pushing a little girl out of his way, but he decided to look at some books instead. Teresa coached me on the scientific method for selecting children’s books at the library. Let Josiah grab a large pile of anything that catches his eye, then keep the ones that have few enough words on each page to keep his attention.

While we were cooling off at the library we played with some plastic dinosaurs and some puzzles. On the way out Josiah wanted to look at the rats. The “rats” turned out to be a pair of hamsters. At this point in our day, it wasn’t even 11am yet and Teresa didn’t start shopping with her friend until 10. So I still had a lot of time on my hands.

We decided to find Cherokee park and drove until we found a different playground. This is a very large old park with lots of trees and lots of good sticks. Josiah is very into his sticks and rocks these days. He collected his sticks and stuck them into various holes in the playground equipment. We experienced a couple of major milestones while we played at the park.

Josiah climbed his first tree and just a moment later he said to me, “I’m sorry Daddy, I have to leave because I need to chase that girl.” In a flash he was off, chasing a little girl and shouting, “I am a scary ape.” The girl was faster than he was, which was good, because I don’t think he knew what he would do if he actually caught her. I didn’t know I was going to have to transition from tree climbing to girl chasing quite that fast, but they do say kids grow up so fast these days.

After lunch we caught up with Mommy and after naps we capped off our day with a slice of coconut meringue pie from the homemade pie kitchen. From this Daddy’s perspective, days just don’t get much sweeter than this.