Daley Ponderings

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! 

4/8 - We were reading a non-word book about getting a new baby in the house, and Noah would say "baby" perfectly as he pointed to the baby in each picture.  He now says it often, sometimes referring to himself, sometimes to my tummy, sometimes to a picture of another baby, sometimes randomly. (More)

I just updated Usermin, and so wanted to make sure that my custom modules didn't break.  And in the process, poked around through my webalizer module, which shows the things that people type into search engines to end up at our blog as well as the number of hits for certain pages.  Some of them aren't surprising, but quite a few are interesting to see. (More)

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.

I had the privilege of installing VMWare 1.0.5 on a brand new 2.6.25 kernel.  I downloaded the 2.6.XX patch for vmware 1.0.4, applied the one change from asm to linux in vcpuset.h.  That had worked for me before when using 1.0.5 on a 2.6.24 kernel, but today I downloaded a 2.6.25 kernel for someone and of course, someone changed something slightly, causing the vmware module (vmnet) to no longer compile.  Fortunately for me, a small bit of hacking fixed it, and now I can go to bed. (More)

It took some amount of work to get Linux up and running on my laptop, but I just got a new computer ($50 from Peter's workplace - let me or him know if you are interested, there might be some more left) and installed Linux in an hour two, including copying all the old data from the old computer.  There aren't any interesting notes for people following in the future, because everything worked, without any technical skills.  Hibernation, sound, UPS, display resolution, hot keys, all just worked.  Pretty nifty.  Linux might actually be getting to the point where non-technical end-users can install it, let alone use it on their desktops.

Tuesday, we all went to the Midwife Center for our first appointment.  Nancy is the midwife with whom I had my last appointment during Isaac's pregnancy.  She said she was surprised to see us, but happy that we did choose the Center.  We had a good conversation about the various issues - what I mean is, she is happy to provide us care, and we are happy to receive care from the midwives at the Center.  One thing to pray about is that she does have to check with her doctor and the district attorney just to double check that there is no conflict of interest for her to provide care for us.  This is a slight concern because she will be called to testify in Judy's trial since she was the last one to examine me before I switched to Judy's care. (More)

[Dictation taken by Mommy.  This is a song, but it was hard enough to get all the words written in time, there was no way she could write the notes as well.]

How the Lord is, is a man.
Well, Lord, will lead me in the paths of righteousness.
Lord God, He's the Spirit of lords.
Well, Lord is a Savior, we have come to earth.
The Lord is a King of kings, how great the Lord is good to us.
How God is so, how to the path of righteousness.
For many years we've sing God's praise,
but when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and Christ the Lord will not only be the God
but all will have to believe in him.
But you shall be the Lord of lords.

Last night I had Jon put his hand on my belly while I was reading to everyone at bedtime.  I figured that was an easy way to wait patiently for a kick, since we'd have a story to listen to.  Sure enough, about five minutes later, he felt one!

Due to needing to have the well-child visits a year apart and to my previous and current hesitation to use the phone, especially with our doctors' office having this weird new scheduling system, we didn't get to Jonathan's four year checkup until last week. (More)

I try to be an informed voter, but I find it very hard to find information that will help me become informed.  I finally found this link at SmartVoter where you can type in your address and get information on what your ballot will say.  Unfortunately, it does not have the most local information, but it does tell me what district I am in for state things (how confusing to be in different districts for different things...)

Every single election I have voted in previously, there has been some surprise on the ballot that I was not prepared for.  It's even worse with the new computerized voting machines because they complain if you leave a blank spot.  (They let you leave it blank eventually, but I think it even beeps at you.) But I won't vote for something or someone I don't know anything about.

Now to find the info for my local information... 

Jonathan is very often singing or humming now as he works or plays.  He knows the first and last verses of Amazing Grace and parts of the middle verses.  He likes the "What's in the Honeypot" song from his piano lesson CD, as well as the version of "This Old Man" from the same.  He also frequently makes up his own songs, with words from all different sources including his own brain.

He continues to be excited about the baby.  He likes to try to hear him, and he will speak loudly to my belly, "Hey, baby!  I'm your big brother!  Hey, baby!  Can you hear me?  Wake up!"  He also likes to sing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" to the baby. He thinks he felt a movement once.

We've been reading about the ocean and sea creatures and now he wants to be a deep sea diver when he grows up. 

He plays sea diver, Mary and Joseph, mommy and baby animal, and any number of other creative games.  He discovered how to pull the curtains in front of the couch to make a tent/cave and he likes to make other kinds of structures with blankets and couch cushions.

Whenever Daddy opens a bottle of Blenheim ginger ale, Noah takes several sips, too.

Tuesday (4/2) Noah thoroughly inspected the dishwasher handle.  You can tell he's in a family of engineers!

He can say "mommy" now, though not consistently.  He also says "me."  He said "cashew" unprompted once, but we're out of cashews now, so he has not had another opportunity.  He says "nana" unprompted for banana.   He also says diaper, which sounds like "dai-doo" or "ba-boo" or some combination depending on how he's feeling.  His new unprompted signs are help and apple.

I feel that on the talking front, it's like he took a year break and now he's making progress the way he "should have."

He can open doors pretty well, and he knows how to open our fence gate.

He can do the small knob puzzles, though sometimes he still gets frustrated if the piece is completely upside down (turned 180, that is.)  I guess he doesn't feel he should have to turn it that far for it to fit. 

He loves playing whatever Jonathan is playing, copying him precisely.

Speaking of precise, Noah likes for things to go in their places.  When he stirs a soup, he taps the spoon on the side of the pot, and then places it on the spoon rest.  He complains if the spoon rest is not there.  He likes putting away, but since Jonathan doesn't we are still working on cleaning up before moving on to the next thing.

I'm working on a slow night weaing process.  At this point, I don't want to do anything abrupt, and this is what has been working:  letting him nurse when he asks but limiting it to ten minutes, giving him a one minute warning.  Often he would stop and turn over at the warning.  If he does get upset, we help him calm down and he's been doing better at that.  Now I'm down to five minutes with a one minute warning.  He will often ask for more, holding up one finger for "one more minute" (which is very cute!)  If he asks nicely with no complaining, I usually say yes.  I will offer to hold his hand when we're done with nursing but he's still awake, and he usually accepts.  I change his diaper whenever it's wet and sometimes he'll just go back to sleep without nursing once he's dry.  Nights have been so much better recently, and I'm thankful.

It seems to be the idea this year to release the April Fool's day jokes early, perhaps to give them more credibility, or maybe simply to join with the Australians.

I hadn't heard of the spaghetti tree joke before, but that is a pretty good one.  I showed Jonathan and Noah the picture, and they both said that couldn't happen, though Noah thought it was pretty funny.  Wikipedia also mentioned the left-handed whoppers and Taco Bell purchasing (and renaming) the Liberty Bell.

Perhaps Google's reason for releasing their joke early was due to the content of the joke. I thought the comment about it being old news was pretty good.

And famous people have it so rough.

For those of you with more time than I, you can read the top 100 jokes. I think its pretty funny when the TV and radio stations report stuff, and get more calls than for any of their regular news.