Daley Ponderings

...is going great, but has its challenges.  I'm probably not the only one to brush someone's teeth with one hand while bouncing a crying baby with the other.  But bedtime is pretty much the only time of high demand from all at once.  Jonathan is great about waiting and about helping Faith to wait (singing, bouncing);  Noah needs more practice, but he's good sometimes.  Although just now, he brought over Faith's bouncy seat so he could sit in my lap (instead of crying about not being able to sit in my lap while I was holding her.)  (More)

I have to say that the real baby is much more squashed in me than that little graphic baby is on the sidebar.  (S)he pokes up knees and heels all the time and increasingly presses on my bladder.  I am ready to go, but still have plenty of things I can do while waiting.  When Mom and Janet first arrived, I was feeling anxious to get the baby out the next day, but I am content to wait until the right time.

Here are some things I have written down on scraps of paper that haven't made it out to the blog until now:

We got ants in our car, presumably from having food everywhere on our vacation trip, and one time when we were buckling in, Jonathan exclaimed that he had an ant crawling in his ear.  I couldn't see it, but he said it was far down and wiggling.  I told him it was probably just a phantom feeling after one had crawled in and out.  However, a day or two later, Jonathan came up to me and said, "Mommy, I removed a dead ant from my ear!"

When we were at the Maggie P, the boys were playing on the top bunk with Aunt Janet's supervision.  She then needed to leave and formally announced her abdicating of responsibility.  Not 5 seconds later, we hear a big clunk.  Noah tried climbing down (but only actually fell the last foot or so because Jonathan was holding onto his arm.)  Jonathan's explanation for how it happened was, "He wanted to do it by his own accord."

8/12 - Jonathan counted backwards from 19, his own idea, and with no help.

I am starting to get used to the idea that this new house is my own, and not just someone else's with my furniture in it.  We are starting a compost pile, and there are a lot of local corn husks and cobs in it already.  Jon keeps clunking his head on low ceiling pieces, especially in the basement and coming in on the porch.  I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about it.

We have running hot and cold and drinkable water!  Jon hooked up my brand new front-loading washer two days ago and installed the dryer yesterday.  Hooray!  The washer really does dry things better and the dryer has a shorter running time.  Jon looked in two stores for an umbrella type clothes line without success, but we'll get some kind of line out sometime.  For the moment, I'm using regular detergent in the washer, but being careful to use a small amount.  I drew a line on the cup for what seems good.  It has not sudsed up too much.  Otherwise, he detergents cost twice as much (and effectively four times as much since you only use half the regular amount.)

Breakfast time!  Even when you live 5 minutes from church you can still be late, and I want to avoid that.

Yes, we have a new house!  The closing was a little hectic because the seller left a van in the driveway and we had to work out an escrow agreement for them to get rid of it (which still had not been done by last night.)

Right after closing, we headed up to do work.  We have had several helpers, which is MUCH APPRECIATED!!!  The very first job I had on my list to do turned out impossible when 8 months pregnant (pulling old carpet staples out of the bedroom floor.)  So I cleaned out the very nasty freezer and not quite so bad fridge.  (They had left it plugged in but warm, which let stuff grow in the freezer.)  I only did the interior and exterior surfaces - I left the drawers and shelves for my wonderful next-day helpers.

So my job has turned out to be delegator/director, errand-runner, and children supervisor.  That is about the limit this Mommy can handle and so I am very thankful for my cleaning helpers who have made much progress on the road to making my new kitchen and bathroom useable.  (And one of the men who had finished what Jon asked him to do came and took out those staples!)

The new water pipes are in, the chlorine has been poured down and flushed out.  Now we wait and pray for no bacteria to grow.

Our bedroom needs more work than we thought originally - sanding and finishing the hardwood floor (should look nice in the end) and stripping wallpaper and repainting.  We thought we could just touch up the paint, but the wallpaper underneath is having trouble and would just peel off more after we did it.

There are also window frames/sills to repaint, and maybe some doors.  All the paint in the cans in the basement is old and unuseable, but at least some of the color labels are still there, so we can match it and not have to pick out anything new.

Jon also has exterior work to do.

The boys are sometimes restless, being there for hours on end and not much for them to help (their cleaning is not very thorough yet and they got tired of plumbing after the first day and started playing with the tools instead so Jon sent them upstairs.)  They did do some dust mopping of the walls last night, which was fun for them and a start for tomorrow's helpers.

And there's still plenty of packing to do in the old house!  I'm so thankful that we can still be living in our old house and not, for example, have to camp in the yard for weeks...

In related news, Jonathan got stung by a wasp on Friday just before we were going to head home.  Thankfully, he had no allergic reaction (this was his first time, so we didn't know for sure) but he sure did scream about it.  When he's upset, he's very irrational ("this will sting forever, it will NEVER feel better!") but he did calm down and said a cloth with water on the spot helped, and in a couple of hours it did not hurt any more.

Well, that's longer than what I meant to type, time to get going with the day.

Vacation was fun, see the pictures: Connecticut, New Hampshire.

7/26 - A little boy, older than Noah and younger than Jonathan, asked Noah his name.  When Noah did not say anything, the boy kept repeating, "What's your name?"  Eventually, Noah walked over to the table and got his water cup, brought it over to the boy, and pointed to his name printed on the cup.

That same evening (we were at the church picnic) all the kids got glow bracelets.  Just as we were leaving, Jonathan bit his and splashed the contents into his eye.  Someone scooped him up and rushed him to the sink, and Jon helped him rinse it for about 20 minutes.  Thankfully, the package said only to rinse and nothing about going to the ER.  His eye is fine.

35 weeks:  Today we had a midwife appointment.  Even Noah got to hear the heartbeat this time.  Everything is well.

Packing is coming along thanks to several helpers.  We're very busy and it's pretty hot, but we're getting there by the grace of God.  Closing is tomorrow.  More helpers lined up for the rest of the week.  If you want to be one of them, let us know!

On Wednesday, we walked to the Shursave for a regular shopping trip. The only difference in this trip was the lack of milk in the bottom of the cart, since I had just gotten some at Trader Joe's. But it made a big difference for Jonathan! He pulled the cart the whole way home by himself, except for the street crossings where I just kept a hand on it for safety. Noah was ambling along at his inquisitive pace, and once we crossed the last street, Jonathan steadily made his way towards home. (More)

We went through Jonathan's piles of saved papers and threw out a bunch. We took pictures of some things and they are in the pictures page under jonathan/2008/scrapbook. Some are labelled "bulk save see file for details" or some such thing. Here are the details. (More)

Jonathan enjoys blocking a doorway and demanding, "Three thousand dollars!" or some such amount. Sometimes he'll block every doorway from the laundry to the bedroom, charging an exorbitant amount of money every time. If there are any complaints, he always says, "Don't worry, it's just pretend money."

So now Noah, always happy to copy his big brother, has started in on the game. I come up from downstairs, and there he is at the top of the stairs with the door closed, his little hand sticking through the crack, saying, "Dah!" (dollar!) So now Mommy has to pay $3001 every time she goes anywhere. (:

I forgot to write this down before; Jonathan can now spell "Jonathan Daley" all by himself. He used to get stuck after "Jon."

He read a book of jokes the other day, and he thought they were hilarious. But he doesn't quite get the concept of "crossing" two things. Jonathan's version: "What do you get when you cross the street with a duck and a cow? Milk and quackers!" (More)

Home stretch, here we are!  This will be the first time my third trimester is entirely in the summer, so I was glad for that stretch of cold, rainy May. (More)

Yesterday, Jonathan was playing with a mini flashlight when part of it fell off.  He spent quite a while trying to put it back together ("Mommy! The clear part fell off, and when I tried to get that, the bulb fell out.  Where does this black piece go?")  But he was mostly talking to himself or about it, not asking for help.  Then after a while he came to me and said triumphantly that he had fixed it!  All by himself.  ("I couldn't find where that black piece went, but then I found where it should go and I tested it and it works.  It's even brighter than it was before!")

 

Jonathan got a couple of connect the dots books for Christmas and has recently taken off with them.  He can easily do the ones that go up to 25, and I made him a homemade one that went to 40.  He likes to make his own and have me or Jon fill them out.  Usually he does not label the dots with numbers, though occasionally he will.

Jonathan wants me to write that he says, "blaller, blaller, hee haw haw."

Noah, on the other hand has some more words and signs.  Well, one sign, cereal.  Words are "down" (dow), "beep" and "bird" which really sounds like (bee.) (More)

Life cereal was on sale for $2, and we found a $1 off coupon inside one box.  So tonight, Jonathan bought a box of cereal with his own dollar bill.  We all walked to the store together. Jonathan found the cereal aisle by himself and saw where the cereal was, but had Daddy reach up to the high shelf.  Then he waited in the express lane, put his box and his coupon on the counter, and paid with his dollar.  He was especially happy to get his own receipt. (More)

4/10 - "That makes us laugh to the tip of our lungs!"

4/21 - Kind of like a spoonerism: "Daddy, do you want a bug wrap?"  He meant "back rub."  We all got a laugh out of that one.

4/25 - He woke up in a happy mood this morning, before the rest of us.  He took off his diaper, changed into clothes, and went to the computer room to play quietly with legos until the rest of us got up.  He was especially helpful and obedient, and he said, "It's so fun to be a happy, cheerful boy."  So fun for me, too! 

During our vacation in NH in January, we memorized Psalm 1 as a family.  Jonathan loves to recite it, but I was hesitant to get a recording without his awareness.  Here is where Grandma comes in!  She visted with a fun toy on her computer - a headset with microphone.  Jonathan happily recorded his voice on several occasions and here is the mp3 of Psalm 1: Jonathan Psalm 1.mp3.