Daley Ponderings

6/18 - Talking at the dinner table about what something tasted like.  Mommy: "My tongue said [it was yummy]."  Jonathan:"My tongue said, too." Noah: "My tongue said, one!"

6/25 - Fire safety lesson.  We learned about Stop, Drop, and Roll.  What a fun thing to teach!  We've also been discussing what to do if there's a house fire and what to say if you have to call 911.  Jonathan knows Daddy's cell phone number and our street address.  He also can recall our home number if he gives it some thought, but Daddy's cell comes quickly to mind.

6/28 - Noah's third birthday!  Since it was on a Sunday, the church sang to him, which was more embarrassing to him than I would have guessed.  When Paul asked him how old he was, he said, "one."  But after some coaching throughout the day, he now says, "'ee!"  The Weavers came over for chips and salsa (Noah's requested birthday dinner) and cake and ice cream.  There was lots of crazy fun, including a rubber band fight, swinging, and a football game in the backyard.  After that, Noah had a couple of phone calls but was falling asleep while talking to Grandma and Dad-o, so he took a nap.  Jonathan woke him up for dinner but he was too sleepy to eat.  After that, he opened presents, which was quite fun and woke him up thoroughly.  Pictures will come sometime.  We measured Noah on the height chart (a birthday tradition here) and he is just over 40" tall, which is only an inch shorter than Jonathan was at four years.

6/28 - Sometime in the evening, when the boys were playing with the presents and Mommy was cleaning up, I noticed Faith sitting up on the corner of the coffee table.  After the suspects were questioned, it was determined that Faith had crawled up there herself with the help of a box the presents had been in.

6/29 - Jonathan and Noah were playing Star Wars.  Jonathan said, "I'm Obi Wan."  Noah said, "Me not Obi Wan, me Obi Three!"

Heather remarked at dinner tonight (at the Olive Garden - thanks Wightmans, we've got 7 more dinners at this rate to celebrate our anniversary) that we are a rich family: we now own two cars and two houses.  I did realize that some people spend more on their cars than we spent on our first house, but nevertheless, we have been blessed financially.

Our new vehicle is a 1997 Oldsmobile Silhouette van in near perfect condition - the seller is more meticulous and pays more attention to details than I do, if you can believe that. (More)

I keep forgetting to post this.  A friend who currently lives in China wrote:

It has been interesting to hear some of my former students express excitement and intrigue about the presidency of Barack Obama. The reason it has captured their attention is because it proves to them that the US truly is a democratic republic. The government of China often down plays American democracy, insisting that, in reality, only a few families have any power (Kennedys, Bushs, Clintons, etc.), and so the election of an ethnic minority, relatively unknown just five years ago, to President of the United State has proven to my students the US really is a democracy, contrary to what they are often taught.

We are the happy recipients of two used swingsets - one from a family at church and one from the next door neighbors.  It is loads of fun and we're planning on building monkey bars between the two sets.

Recently, when I was reading one of our storybooks about Noah and the flood, our Noah asked me, "Why God tell me make ark?"

6/6 - Jonathan came up to me and said, "Four is exactly halfway between nine and negative one."  He had figured this out from an addition facts table he had posted on our fridge, looking at the column headers and pretending that the plus sign in the corner stood for -1.

Jonathan is now helping me with the laundry, and it is wonderful.  I showed him what settings he should use, which he marked with stickers.  Now when I ask him he will bring down the hamper and do all the steps on his own.  He can also do the transfer to the dryer, but he prefers not to sort and fold afterwards.  Fine by me at this point!  It is amazing to me how nice it is to have this help.  Mostly because I am not usually bothered by laundry, except that it is one more thing on the todo list.

Whew! Enjoy this because I bet you'll have to wait a while for more posts.

Faith is 21.8 lb, 29" tall.  Those are both 90th percentile.  Everything checked out great, though he did do some extra fiddling with her legs because she has "asymmetrical creases" in her thighs.  This can indicate problems with the hips or differences in leg lengths, but he concluded that she's fine.  She got a shot and her lead test, which was unhappy, but she was quite curious about the multicolored bandaids and managed to pull them both off before the end of the appointment. (More)

After we hear others talking about ticks everywhere, we hadn't seen any at all in our yard.  And then Jonathan gets Lyme Disease.  He had a fever and slept all day for two days, and then he was better so we didn't think anything of it.  A few days later, he gets this red rash on his cheek, rather like a sunburn.  But it didn't hurt or itch, so I didn't do anything besides keep an eye on it.  Then last Saturday, he started getting the bulls-eye rashes showing up on his wrist, arm, and leg.  By Sunday several more had appeared.  Talking to a friend about it linked the previous fever to the rashes. Jon went over every bit of Jonathan's body with a magnifying glass, but the culprit had left.  (I'm itching all over just typing this.) I called the doctor's office the minute they opened Monday morning, and got an appointment for just as soon as we could get there. (More)

We now have a dishwasher in our kitchen, which Jon installed himself (running new electric, supply, and drain.) Yeah!

There is also a ceiling fan/light fixture in our bedroom to replace the bare bulb fixture.   Yeah!

5/13 - N count to 10

5/13 - Jonathan's practical math problem that he solved himself: If you have a foam octopus with 5 legs, how many do you have to cut in half to get eight legs for your octopus?

5/18 - Jonathan can do multiplication by: x2, x10, x1

5/23 - Faith will now sometimes crawl to the bathroom when she needs to go.

5/24 - Jonathan can pump himself on a swing, from still to high.

5/29 - I saw a hummingbird at the feeder!

Noah likes to play "Robo-bot" and when he does, he always has a wire sticking out of his back that shoots water, and lasers on his arms.

5/30 - Jonathan was complimenting me on the yummy lunch I made, and included the line, "Good old Mommy."  Noah retorted, "not old..." Then ensued a discussion of age and who I was older than and younger than.  Somehow this turned into relationships and fathers-in-law.  Jonathan discovered that he does not have a father-in-law, though his first guess was Papa.  Then he asked who great-grandpa Wightman's father-in-law was.  I remembered his last name, but not his first name, so I got out Mom's Honor Enough book for that branch of the family and looked it up.  Then Jonathan wanted to know the name of Whitney Porter's father-in-law, and his, and his, as far as I could.  There you go, Grandma, a budding geneaologist!

Tom asked for some statistics for his blog, and I figured I might as well look them up for mine while I was at it.  I am not particularly surprised by the results, so perhaps not worth posting, but in case anyone thought the world was interested about our kids... (More)

I've noticed the "kids" at church (in quotes, since folks are quite sure where to place me, the "adults" say I'm a kid, and the "kids" say I'm adult (I think primarily since I'm married and have kids of my own)) hug more than I am used to, and I had internally wondered a couple times if it was a culture thing (e.g. confined to our church) or if it was a larger generational thing. (More)

I guess I fail the test, since I answered "no" to both questions, though I suppose Brad Andresen from college (the one who always said of me, "You're more liberal than you think you are.") would be happy to hear that I'd be more likely to think it alright to slap my dad in a skit than to worry about touching a faucet.

5/4 - Jonathan read Hop On Pop to us.  It took two sessions because it is a pretty long book.  It was fun for me because I know that was one of the first books I read out loud to my parents.

5/8 - Kids only know what they're exposed to.  When Noah saw the TV in our hotel room, he said, "Little movie screen!"

That was fun for them, staying in a hotel room.  We were there two nights for the homeschool conference.  We got a lot of info that we're still processing.  I'm not sure how much I'll be posting on that, since I try to post minimally anyway.

5/10 - Noah can count to seven.

Faith is starting to pull up to standing on furniture.  This now makes most of the coffee table no longer safe for lego bases, so we'll have to figure out something else.

4/23 and following - Noah sings a little song, waving his arms around and concludes with, "Amen."  He then says, "Me get mine Bible."  He has loved reading the Bible even from such a young age as I was not sure if he could distinguish it from other books, except that he was often drawn to a Bible.  He'll remind me to read it, ask me to read it to him, ask me to sing it to him.  "His" Bible is a little green Gideon Bible that I got in college.

Noah is now firmly over the hesitation to say things before he knows he can say it perfectly.  However, it does bring a different kind of frustration.  I can now hear the struggle that used to go on in his head.  He will know what he wants to say, but what comes out of his mouth is not quite right.  He can hear that, so stops and works on correcting it.  Often the trouble is switching adjectives and nouns "bird red" vs. "red bird".  He used to be very patient with us as we tried to figure out what he said, repeating until we got it.  Now he gets upset and repeats in a sort of raspy loud voice, getting louder and raspier with each repetition.

On the other hand, we can understand more and more of what he says.  And he even told someone his name yesterday!

With the advent of spring, I brought out the red potty - the idea being that we have it outside where he can go diaperless and use it whenever without worry of accidents.  This worked very nicely the first few days, even though he doesn't like going diaperless.  In this most recent adventure, I have discovered that if he goes right before bed, he will be dry all night.  HOORAY!  He didn't get the bad genes!  Now he just needs the motivation to go all the time in the potty/toilet.

He just learned how to respond to the question, "How old are you?" and soon he will have to change his answer!  I know I'll blink and the answer will be  "23."

So, I know you can't believe anything you read in a newspaper, but if the newspaper calls you and tells you something, then can you believe it?  How about if both Pittsburgh newspapers call?

We've heard that Judy was acquitted of two of the three charges brought against her, but she was fined the maximum for the third charge, which comes to a grand total of $100.

It'd be nice if the county would notice that the prosecution wasted seven years trying to get a verdict, and failed so future folks don't have to go through all of this.

Would you send your nine-year-old on a New York City subway by himself?  Would you send him on a horse from Oklahoma to New Mexico and back by way of the deserts of Texas - taking his five-year-old brother along? (More)