Daley Ponderings

American Indians: the original free-range parents

joyful — Sat, 18 May 2013 10:07:14 -0400

Quote from Vostaas: White Buffalo's Story of Plains Indian Life by William White Buffalo:

"Many Indian boys, and some girls, too, learn to chop wood when they are quite young! Our mothers do not say, "No! No! That axe is too sharp for you to use!" They say, "Go chop some more wood. Is the axe sharp enough?"

Pocket Notes

joyful — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:16:54 -0400

Oh, yes. It has been half a year since my last pocket notes post...

9/6 - Joy says "yum" and "yummy", "all done/gone" (sounds like ah-doh), "where shoe?", and "mine" (sounds like my)

9/25 - Faith reading the Bible to Joy: "When you want Mommy to cuddle with you but she can't, you aren't alone because God is with you."

Faith also reminded herself of this as she went down to put tools away in the basement.

9/28 - Noah let me listen to his piano practice and I was impressed with his progress: both hands, dynamics, steady rythmn

10/2 - Noah lost his upper left second incisor. It had to come out to make room for the new first incisor. That is, he lost three baby teeth to make room for two adult teeth. As of March, he has not lost any more.

10/12 - Jon felt the baby move

~10/12 - Joy says, "'kay" for ok

10/14 - Faith felt the baby move

10/14 - Joy says, "two, three" sounds like "do, wee"

10/17 - Joy says, "hot" sounds like a breathy "ha"

10/21 - I turn 33.

10/24 - Joy says, "thank you" sounds like "tha tchoo"

10/31 - The almost-went-to-the-doctor day. Joy put a bead up Faith's nose (I think she was lying down). After much distress in attempting extraction, I finally got it with a toothpick. Later that same day, Jonathan cut his ankle on a piece of broken tile. He was very dramatic about it, which we have started to treat as the boy crying wolf, but when I actually saw it, I agreed that it was pretty impressive. But a butterfly closure did the trick and we did not need to go get stitches.

11/1 - Joy put on Faith's shirt, underwear, and shorts - she wants to be just like big sister!

11/1 - Joy said, "Faith" sounds like Thay.

11/18 - Jonathan turns 9

11/21 - Isaac would be 10. Wow.

12/8 - We move into our own house!

1/18 - Joy poured her own milk by herself (with the last of the gallon).

1/9 - I was looking for electrical caps. Joy said, "dap!" and handed me the jar of caps.

1/26 - To Joy, every animal says "roar"

1/28 - Jonathan had a bad math day. The worksheet would say "what's the difference..." and Jonathan's answer was "one's longer".

2/2 - Jon's birthday party/Housewarming party

2/8 - I was using a measuring cup to scoop batter out, and Joy said, "me do cup please"

2/9 - Jonathan: "Nobody can argue that Mrs.Lull is a good teacher." Faith: "'Cause she is!"

Joy likes giving high fives. She'll say "fie!" and hold her palm up.

2/11 - Jon turns 36.

2/13 - Jeremiah is born.

2/15 - Joy, heading down the stairs, said, "Bye. Love you, Mommy."

Three of Joy's two year molars came in after I last brushed her teeth before Jeremiah was born and before I first brushed her teeth a week later. The slow one is the top left.

2/23 - Joy turns two.

3/10 - Joy sees Jeremiah spit up on my shoulder. She says, "Spill." and then goes and gets me a sponge.

3/16 - Faith reads! She reads the first several stories in I Can Read It! Book 1.

My Mother-In-Law's Insight Into Homeschooling

joyful — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 09:15:17 -0400

We are still working on renovating our new house, and thus we are still living with Jon's generous parents. And since we are living here, we are schooling here. But a comment from his mom gave me some insight into some non-homeschoolers' comments about homeschooling.

We usually "have school" up in our bedrooms, since that is "our" territory while we're living here. But it is not a soundproof house, and so anything louder than "inside voices" is easily heard from downstairs.

Barbara's comment was, "It's not how I imagined it. Actually, it's how I imagined it might be if I was doing it, and that's why I figured I could never do it."

Yes, folks, homeschooling is not usually a calm, quiet, everyone sitting nicely together doing schoolwork experience. It involves the toddler getting mad that she can't use all of the math manipulatives at once. It involves the toddler scattering the ones she does use all over the room. It involves the third grader who hates writing crying about his assignment and questioning (loudly and with a whiny voice) why Sonlight wants to torture the students with Diamond Notes. It involves the new reader kicking the wall when he gets stuck on a word, and wiggling around generally as he thinks about words. It involves the preschooler begging for more math right when Mom is in the middle of explaining something to someone else. It involves any one or more of them pushing the beds apart and spilling the covers on the floor during the course of schooltime. It involves multiple people asking for help (or otherwise interrupting) at the same time. It involves Mom losing her patience and yelling. It involves Mom wondering if she's going insane and on the worst days crying because she doesn't feel like she's good enough. On the very worst days, everyone cries. On the best days, only one person cries. (I don't think we've had a single school day yet where Joy hasn't cried about something during the course of school time.)

And yet, I would say this year is going well. We are covering Bible, History, Language Arts, and Math. Noah is learning to read, Jonathan is learning to write, Joy is learning to be patient, Faith is learning letters and writing and numbers. I'm learning to keep my patience and correct calmly. They're all (except Joy) memorizing scripture. They remember much more math than I would have thought based on our very long summer break. And we're getting our assignments done before noon!

So if you've ever thought, "Wow, I could never homeschool." The answer is, "You can." If that's what you decide is what is good for your family, you can do it. If you decide it's not for your family, don't hold up the homeschooling moms as some otherworldly beings who can manage something you never could. There are plenty of days we wonder if we can manage it at all. Just like any mom anywhere in any circumstance.

Pocket Notes

joyful — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 08:24:35 -0400

9/19 - Joy has been telling me when she needs a new diaper (patting her bottom) but this day, she got out the changing pad and wipes, set up the pad on the bathroom floor, put a new diaper on top of the wipes box, lay down on the pad, and called for me.

9/20 - Noah is definitely our hands-on guy. He asks for crafts related to what we do in school. When we read a book about archaeology, he immediately wanted to go dig in the back yard. He got a trowel and a sieve and a container to hold his treasures and happily dug and sifted for a long time.

~9/20 - Joy can say, "ow".

9/25 - Joy put on her own socks all by herself. Before this, she had successfully put on mine.

9/27 - Joy says "please" to go with her sign. It sounds like "wee".

9/27 - Sounding the same, but in a different context. When she plays with the abacus, she says, "wee, wee, wee" as she movs the beads. 9/28 - She also "counted" "wee, wee, wee" when playing with the corners cards.

9/28 - Faith really wanted to play Corners with me, so I made up a version she can do. (The "real" game involves finding numbers that add up to 5, 10, 15, or 20.) We played where we had to match the color and the numeral. Faith loved it!

Now Joy's "please" has some gentle consonant in front, similar to "fwee".

I am now 19 weeks into the pregnancy, which means we are almost halfway there! I started feeling movement around 15 weeks, which is a little later than I have felt the couple of most recent others. But there is definitely no worry about that now - baby's moving plenty!

As with Joy's pregnancy, I'm experiencing extreme sensitivity with nursing. For a while, (likely due to transition and sleeping in someone else's house) Joy was nursing every two hours or so during the night. It was really wearing on me, and after one really horrible night, Jon took her for the whole next night and proved to us both (Joy and me) that she could get through the night without nursing. The next night, she slept next to me as usual, but I was as firm as Daddy and told her to wait until morning. That worked, too! And now she sleeps through the night barely even stirring (there was a transition period where she would cry when I said no, gradually decreasing) This is such a sanity saver for me. And now sometimes she doesn't even nurse in the mornings, but we just get up and go have breakfast.

I'm still debating within myself whether to wean her before she's two or not, since I think it's quite likely I'll be tandem nursing again if I do make it until she's two. But that, I think, we will take one day at a time and see what happens. She's only nursing one to three times in a 24 hour period, so I can manage to handle it for now.

Work on the house is progressing and it is encouraging. We have pictures in the camera, but I am so behind on uploading that it will be a while before they're posted.

The weather is definitely fall and the house is getting chilly. But the plumber is not coming to hook up the boiler until next week. That means cold water and only space heaters, but it's not really cold yet. It felt worse when it was two weeks, but now one of those has already gone by!

Jonathan continues to live at the library when he can. He's been reading multitudes of Animorphs and Warriors (about cats.) He LOVES writing in cursive and this is the motivation for writing now. He's going to participate in the Book-It program this year because he can write down the titles in cursive. (Last year he chose not to participate simply because he didn't want to write down the books he read!)

School is going well overall, but the definition of "going well" may mean differently to you than it does to me. And that is my next post.

The Big Move

joyful — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:00:24 -0400

How do I begin? Not really at the beginning.

June 15, we sold the house we were living in and drove to New Hampshire in two moving trucks and a minivan. (A very hearty and grateful "thank you!" to Ron and Ron for driving the trucks!)

The days preceding that day were extremely full, including two funerals for people from families dear enough that we felt it necessary to carve out the time to spend with them.

We did not technically buy our new house for another couple of days, but it did eventually work out.

We are staying at Jon's parents' house while renovating our new house. This is for the very most part a good thing. The only disadvantages we've found so far involve having things in two places.

Renovations are right now at the "rather overwhelming" stage. There's a lot of work to do and we wonder how it will all get done.

At the end of June, we took a break to spend a week at the Maggie P with lots of family, including the Swiss cousins, and Noah and Joseph had their birthday together.

After we got back, Jonathan, Noah and Faith had two weeks of swimming lessons at the lake. Jonathan started learning official strokes, and Noah got to the confidence level Jonathan had last summer. Faith made progress in being comfortable in the water as well, though she still wouldn't put her head under by the end of the sessions.

For the past week, Jon and Noah have been in Pittsburgh finishing the fixing up of Carroll St, and getting some work done for Lime Daley customers.

I've been meeting with a bunch of contractors - plumbing/heating, painter, plasterer, chimney guys. A local college student has been coming over nearly every day for a few hours to scrape wallpaper. It turns out when you start taking down wallpaper, it just goes and goes and soon you have two whole hallways including staircase of wallpaper to take off. About four layers of it, too, a hundred years' worth.

Speaking of a hundred years. Jon took off part of one wall in preparation for building a built-in bookcase, and he found a treasure! A Mother's Day postcard from 1912, from the Sunday School of Smith Church (Jon's parents' church). It is really neat. We're going to copy one side and then frame it with the copy so you can see both sides.

Time to start getting ready for bed. I will try to post updates more frequently, but it's hard to find the moments. Tonight, I found myself alone with the computer while all the kids were outside playing with the neighbors. After some grueling looking at curriculum stuff, I thought I'd have a nice little blog time. (:

Pocket Notes

joyful — Sun, 20 May 2012 11:13:49 -0400

4/11 - Jonathan likes to be creative with lunches. He made dill pickle and mustard sandwiches that day. He liked it.

As I was keeping track of rainbows I was struck by how many days were sunny. April 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 25

4/14 - Faith's first time successfully saying her name to a stranger. A major victory! Even still, she doesn't like to do it.

4/16 - Joy's bottom right molar came in

4/18 - We had a very fun afternoon playing family soccer in the back yard. It started out with rather evenly-numbered teams and then progressed to all of us against Daddy only kicking with his left foot. He still beat us. But when we switched goals we managed to get half his score instead of zero. Then we played "ball soccer" which is basically do whatever you want to get the ball to the goal. It was a super fun time!

4/19 - Joy's top left molar came in

Around the end of April, beginning of May, Joy started putting on one leg of pants, and trying to put on socks and shoes.

5/1 - We flew to Florida to spend two weeks with Grandma and Dad-o. A fun-filled time. Not too many details here, and links to Grandma's posts, because I'm trying to pack and move and not spend too long on blog posts.

The day before we left, we got a call that our favorite house in Hillsboro was back on the market, so we scrambled a bit to get another offer in. They counered, and we accepted, and so it looks like we're going to get it after all!

The morning we left, Jon got a call from Denny Rd buyer's agent saying the bank's appraiser rejected the house for several reasons. So he scrambled that day to fix some things, and we gave her a key so the buyers could fix some other things while we were gone. Craziness.

But we did make it to the airport on time.

Much of the time there Jonathan spent in the pool. He, and all the kids, made much progress in those two weeks.

On Friday, Jon met a friend in Ft.Lauderdale for a bike trip. The rest of us went to Sea World. Very fun! Jonathan loved the Atlantis ride, everyone loved all the different animals, and the kiddie park (Jonathan's favorite ride in the whole world is the Shamu Express roller coaster.) None of the kids (except Joy) thought they got wet enough at the Shamu show. (Faith and I had chosen to stay away from the splash zone, but she changed her mind after it was too late.)

5/7 - Jonathan touched the drain at the bottom of Grandma and Dad-o's pool.

Grandma's post about the fort.

I met a high school friend in the park and our eight children had fun playing with each other while the moms talked. Here's mom's post about how the maintenance man thought I shouldn't let Joy play on the playground equipment.

5/9 - Great-Grandma Landeen's kitchen sink cabinet doors were open. Joy looked at it, looked at me, shook her head "no" and didn't go near it.

After spending a fun day and a half with Grandma Landeen, we headed to the beach for an hour or so. Jonathan thought it was great to jump up with the waves as they came. Joy and Faith preferred to play in the sand. We got to watch a rainstorm approach but it got blown out to sea south of us.

5/10 - We went to Sea World again, this time with Daddy, but without Grandma and Dad-o. It was also fun, and I love the Manta ride. The harness seat holds you and it's smooth so your head doesn't bang around. It's like being a toddler again, when your Dad swooshes you around flying. We sat in the second row of the Shamu soak zone and this time eveyone agreed that we got too wet. Thoroughly soaked, to be exact. Joy and Faith were crying. All the kids got to change clothes, but Jon and I had to slowly dry all the rest of the day. The dolphin show was really neat - it would be so cool to be pushed through the water like a rocket by a dolphin!

5/11 - Joy's bottom left molar came in

5/12 - All of us went to Animal Kingdom. It was a great time overall. The kids really liked finding animals in the Tree of Life. Jonathan left his Sea World hat in the gear pocket in the Dinosaur ride, but it turns out they have a whole system for retrieving stuff like that, and he got it back! We had a ton of fun in the Boneyard playground. Joy climbed up the rope nets and slid down the big twisty slides all by herself. Grandma got videos which I'll hope to link to. (The best video sadly didn't get saved because her camera crashed right at the end.) Dad-o was very generous in the ice cream department, for which we were all grateful. (:

5/13 - Jonathan and Noah were sitting on Grandma's porch swing holding up the plastic porch chairs legs out like guns. Jonathan called this massive weapon the "octagun".

5/17 - Faith counted backwards from 10 all by herself.

5/18 - Jonathan said the old fashioned car horns should say "ex-CUSE-me" instead of "ah-OOH-ga"

Notes Catchup Part II, the Whirlwind

joyful — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 11:02:28 -0400

Last catchup ended on the weekend of the fire company banquet. That weekend was also the beginning of the new adventure. Two different people called up to ask about looking to buy our house. No, not the one we're fixing up to sell. The one we're living in. Well, ok, I guess you can come see it, but we're not really thinking of moving. That weekend, Jon is also showing the rental house to someone who might buy it before we finish fixing it up. Jon ramps up looking online at houses in Hillsboro.

3/12 - Noah and Faith are supposed to be doing chores. Faith says her hair is getting in the way. So Noah cuts it for her. They are both very happy with the results. I try to remain serious while explaining why this was not a good idea, but have a hard time not laughing. I think I succeeded. For a five year old, Noah really did a good job. We did go to a place to get the back straightened out a bit. And maybe next time I'll try it myself and save the money (not too much doubt on my part that there will be a next time for somebody.) It is very cute, anyway.

3/15 - Joy right bottom next tooth poked through.

Also in my notes, I've been keeping a record of rainbows on the floor. I'm fascinated by the effect the changes in the sun's seasonal position makes to the success of our prisms. Winter is the time for rainbows. I had wondered if they'd be completely gone with the first day of spring, but two days ago and this morning, we did see some small, faint ones.

3/17 - A nice young couple comes to look at our house. The husband reminds me of Jon. His parents live just down the road. He grew up playing with the boy across the street. He was happy to see our house up on zillow because he always wanted to move back and be near his parents. The parents came to look, too.

3/17 - Joy is now signing more and bye. Her more is the typical "baby talk" that looks more like clapping.

3/18 - Faith, speaking of ranch dressing, "But it's no good with salad on it..."

Jon finds a house in Hillsboro that looks good at a good price. We make an appointment for Wednesday (3/21) for Jon's parents and their contrector friend, Rusty, to see it. On Tuesday, we go ahead and buy a plane ticket for me to go to Hillsboro to look at the house. (Southwest is flexible with changing things.) Wednesday, they go and take lots of pictures and give it the go ahead. All of us in Pittsburgh like the pictures. Thursday, Joy and I fly out to New Hampshire. Friday morning, there's lots of time to pray and go over my notes. In the afternoon, I see the house and Rusty comes, too. I like what I see, and give the go ahead to put in the offer. This is happening pretty fast, lots of emotions running around. But I'm not panicky, because we've thought about it for years. So I'm ready to move if this is now the time. I have a good time in Hillsboro, peaceful and thinking more and more of the advantages of being there. Joy and I fly home Saturday morning.

Because the house is a foreclosure, we don't expect to hear back about our offer for five business days. Those days are filled with nostalgia about Pittsburgh and excitement about what God seems like he's doing in our lives. The Carroll St potential buyer makes an offer that is too low. We think we can get significantly more after finishing the renovations. The Denny Rd buyers make an offer that is too low; Jon works on negotiations.

3/26 - Faith has six cavities and gets four filled. She does a great job. Causes? Maybe nursing while sleeping, maybe no flouride for her first 2 1/2 years, maybe the shape of her teeth, probably a combination.

3/27 - I take the kids to the zoo. I realize that I shouldn't buy a membership as I had planned, not yet. I get all nostalgic about the zoo. We see the newborn gorilla. A peahen eats Joy's cookie. The kids make elongated cent souvenirs. Jonathan soaks himself in the sting ray tank.

3/27 - We show Denny Rd to another nice young couple.

3/29 - The news is in. The Hillsboro house has been sold to someone else. That is very hard news to hear. What was the point of going? What is God doing? Is it God we're followin after all? What is going on? These are the questions I struggled with. I sent an email out requesting prayer and got very encouraging replies. Jon and I had a good talk the next morning also. God is still in control and he still loves us. He has something better for us, He has a plan. Keep trusting. Now I no longer think my trip out was a waste. There are still good things that came out of it, even if we don't get that house.

3/30 - The first nice young couple makes an offer that we like, and they're flexible on move-in date. Ok, now we're selling our house and we don't have one to go to. This sure is an adventure!

3/31 - Joy gets her first molar. Upper right. Others are working their way in also.

So now we're eating up our freezer and pantry food. Starting to pack things up and get ready to pack things up. I can almost not really believe that we're leaving. It's really rather surreal at this point. Some of our friends have already cried. I've already cried. But it's not over yet! I look forward to seeing what crazy plan God has (still reserving the right to cry more, though, even in the looking forward.)

Notes Catchup Part I

joyful — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:35:58 -0400

2/6 - Joy went down a whole flight of stairs successfully. She slides down forwards on her bottom. Faith was with her this time. By now, she's an old pro at stairs.

I bought some mini hair clips for Faith. They are the normal clear, brown, black, swirly brown that hair clips often are. But as soon as Faith saw the swirly brown ones, she said, "Cool! Camo hair clips!" Then she does that macho guy stance that the boys do when they're being or doing something heroic. (:

2/21 - Faith said her whole name with all the correct sounds.

2/22 - Joy tried going down the basement stairs by herself and fell off the side onto Jonathan's science desk. She scraped her face up but nothing worse. Now we are extra vigilant about keeping the door at the top of the stairs shut. She's a pro at going up and down as long as there are walls/railings on the sides. The basement stairs still need supervision.

2/23 - Faith, counting down to blastoff, "10...9...8...3...2...1!"

2/23 - Joy's first birthday! My presents to her were an extra long bath and extra outside time.

2/25 - 3/2: Vacation in San Diego (or Sandy Aygo) with the Daleys. Lots of fun and adventure and cousin time. I discovered that Joy loves walking. She walked to the "scary bridge" and back all on her own (except for crossing the streets and the bridge). Yay for sidewalks!

3/3 - Jonathan and Noah walked to the corner store to get a gallon of milk. I gave them my cell phone. They left at 10:30 then called at 10:35 to report being halfway there. Jonathan said he'd call when they got to the store, but he forgot in the actual buying of the milk, when he discovered that I had only given him enough money for one gallon and not two. He called at 10:45 "1/3 of the way home". They arrived home at 10:50, safe, sound, and triumphant.

3/4 - Joy started clapping.

3/8 - Faith, of Fox in Socks, "This is my bestest book ever!"

3/8 - Joy's bottom left next tooth broke through.

3/8 - I find myself saying, "Ask nicely. How about: 'Faith, will you please cut off my legs?'".

3/8 - Noah and I went to Target to get him new sneakers. Jon had said he should get tie shoes. We spent an hour in Target selecting and practicing. It was frustrating at first and I almost gave up and got velcro. Then all of a sudden, he had it! He practiced by himself several more times and we were both very happy to come home with a new pair of tie sneakers.

3/8 - Noah spends 20 minutes reading Green Eggs and Ham. He got through page 27. I love Dr.Seuss. The repetition is so helpful for beginning readers, and yet he switches things up a bit here and there so you can't completely go by memory. It's so exciting to hear Noah reading!

3/10 - Jon, Joy and I went to the fire company annual banquet. He got an embroidered jacket for his first year of service. It was a nice evening. Oh yeah, we went in our new red convertible. (:

Pocket Notes

joyful — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 11:12:34 -0500

More than a month's worth of notes...

10/3 - Joy's diaper was dry all night long. She went in the potty three or four times. This was exciting to me and so the next night I prepared to be diaperless. I spread a waterproof pad, with towels on top. But she and I are so wiggly during the night, it was hard to keep the towels straight and then she was cold without anything on her lower half and when she did wet the towels, changing them was a pain. So, we're not ready to go diaperless yet, but we do have success with pottying in the night. However, recently (read: several weeks) Joy has been screaming in the night, whether it's changing her diaper or putting her on the potty. I found that if I'm aware of more subtle movements I can nurse her before she screams (but that is her first vocalization) but I am at a loss for the hygiene part. Do I just put her in a paper diaperand undo all the work and awareness of needing to go? Or do I persist in hopes that she'll stop screaming before we both go insane with the sleep interruptions? I need to go look at forums for suggestions.

10/5 - Joy got her uppder left lateral incisor.

10/5 - Jonathan, "I don't feel like Dad-o is a grandpa, 'cause he still goes up on roofs and stuff."

10/7 - Jonathan's caterpillar made a cocoon. Since it's still in there, I'm guessing we're waiting until spring for this guy.

10/7 - Faith was trying on my glasses. Walking around, she'd look down and exclaim, "That looks like a pit!" Then, looking in the mirror, "I look like Mommy."

10/7 - As we drive away from the border guard into Canada, Jonathan pipes up, "I wonder if she'd be interested in this suitcase we've got jam-packed full of spy stuff?"

10/8 - Joy started waving at the baby in the mirror.

10/8 - Joy turns her head when you say her name.

10/14 - Joy top right lateral incisor.

10/17 - Joy beginning to cruise along coffee table.

10/18 - Noah, "I love garlic. There's nothing better to put on your meat than garlic."

10/19-20 - Jonathan and I had a frustrating day in math with Roman numerals. Then in the afternoon, Noah saved the day. He used our big poster to quiz Jonathan and by passively observing, I discovered what he did and didn't know. The next day in school I was able to put that knowledge into the lesson amd we had a great time!

Jonathan is definitely an auditory learner. I don't know how his teachers would deal with it in school, but one of the nice things here is that I can let him sing "14 + 27 = 41" as much as he needs.

10/20 - Jonathan has been enjoying his Lucky Luke book and likes to act out the scenes. He especially likes to be the judge. So he was talking about confiscating some property and I had to interrupt. He pronounced it, "confisticated". It was like an early birthday present. Why? Because I pronounced it that way until college because somehow no one corrected me until then. I may be crazy, but at least I'm bringing my children along with me. (: But I did correct him and told him the story, which he thought was funny, too.

10/21 - My 32nd birthday. A very fun day.

10/22 - Faith pronounced forehead, "head-fort"

10/23 - Dinner table lessons on debt (National and private), credit (cards and the principle), debit cards and bank accounts, monthly spending, etc.

10/24 - Jonathan worked with Daddy on adding four-digit numbers. It was cool to watch how he thought of it. If there was something like 1977 + 1979, he would add 1000+1000, then 900+900, then 70+70, then 7+9. He kept all the various carrying numbers in his head, but usually got the right answer. He had a hard time understanding the traditional method, because he wanted to think of the 900 as 900 and not as 9, but eventually he got it.

10/27 - Joy had a bath with Faith. It was fun to watch her figure out how to sit and move in the water (this was the first bath she has had where I was not in the tub with her on my lap). At first, she kept falling backwards, but she learned how to lean forwards and then reach for toys and eventually stand up. By the end, I didn't have to hold her at all, but just keep spotting hands near her. So fun!

11/1 - Joy started standing for half a second unintentionally.

11/3 - Joy can open cabinets now, so back on go the locks.

11/3 - Joy makes kissing lip smacks. So sweet!

11/3 - Joy walked across the living room pushing the empty block bin.

Yesterday (11/12) she stood up for about 3 seconds. It's funny how different babies are so different. Jonathan walked at just one week shy of nine months. Noah, at eight and a half months was nowhere near walking (he took his first step at 11 months, I just looked up.) Now, Joy is quickly approaching the walking stage and she is 8.5 months.

Faith counts consistently like this, "1,2,3,4,5,6,9,10,11,12,13,14,19" and then random teen numbers until she's tired of it. Sixteen sounds like "hickteen" (:

Going Back To Joy

joyful — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 13:58:58 -0400

Recently, I read One Thousand Gifts, which was recommended by someone whose blog I read, but I can't remember who anymore. It was a beautiful book and has inspired me to be thankful for the little things once again. (Briefly, the hesitations I have in recommending it: she writes pretty stream-of-consciousness, and though I think she does it well, those who are sticklers for grammar might have a hard time. Also, it is written for those who are already Christians.)

The premise is that being thankful opens the door to being joyful. She writes her journey along the road of thankfulness, her progress through the ups and downs of real life. It is a good reminder.

It takes me back to my first year at college, when everything was new, from living on my own, to snow, to daffodils. It takes me back to childhood when everything was new. This must be why Jesus said to become like a child.

People laughed at me in college, because I was no longer a child. I kept telling them my "snow age" was five, since I had moved away from snow when I was four. The cynics laughed at me for taking delight in daffodils ("That's what they're called, right?" I asked.) Taking pictures of the very first light dusting of snow. Freezing my un-mittened hands at the first larger snow but I couldn't keep from playing in it.

I really was more joyful then, though my email signature still holds on. Gradually, though, I got tired of being laughed at or watched strangely. I supressed my outer delight and then the inner faded, too. I want it back! I will take delight in the little things. I will slow down to look at bugs with my kids. I will let myself be thankful and joyful in all these things, and I will not let anyone's laughing penetrate. Neighbors may think I'm crazy, taking pictures of the first snow (that was today!) again, but I do not care. Joy is worth it.

We took a snow day from school today. I jumped around with my kids and took pictures and we dug out the new sizes of snowsuits and Jonathan made a snowman and Noah made slushies (from the railing snow). It was great! It was beautiful.

And I'm glad we seized the moment because in the afternoon the snow turned to rain and most of it is melted now. Children know how to do this and adults are too busy with "matters of consequence". May I always remember this!