Daley Ponderings

Noah has added a syllable to his pronunciation of Jonathan's name: "Ah-huh"

12/11 and following - My aunt gave us some plastic prisms and we have had a lot of fun playing with them in the kitchen (which is the sunniest room in our house.)  The rainbows come out quite nicely and the all the kids love to touch them and play with them. (More)

11/7 - Noah discovered the two cube puzzle that has pictures of six different vehicles and plays the sound of each when the puzzle is completed.  He was having trouble with it, which seemed strange to me at this age.  He kept getting the wrong sounds playing.  I told him to match up the pictures and it would work.  After a while, I took my attention off of Faith to watch Noah and see what the trouble was.  He was matching the pieces face to face instead of next to each other! (More)

I'll start with most recent and then go to my pocket notes.  Jonathan and Faith both had well child checkups yesterday.  As much as it seems like it would be easier to have two checkups together, it really isn't.  I'll go back to scheduling them separately.  It wasn't too bad, but a bit hectic and it took a long time. (More)

10/23 - Jon said, "Ask Jonathan an addition problem with two digit numbers that sum to a multiple of ten."  I asked him 53+17, and Jonathan figured out loud, "the seventeen goes to twenty, the fifty three goes to fifty...seventy!"

I signed Jonathan up for the Pizza Hut Book-it program and the way it works now is that you set your own goals.  We set a goal of thirty books a month - one a day.  He didn't really need extra motivation to read, but it's fun to get free pizza. (:  Some of the books he's read recently include The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Curious George, and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. (More)

Jonathan has created a new superhero.  Actually, a team of superheroes.  They are the SuperFire team, made up of as many different colors as you would like.  Super Orange Fire is the captain (that's usually Jonathan.)  Noah is often Super Blue Fire, or Super Green Fire.  I'm sure I'm forgetting details, but some of the features are that they can turn into fire and they can shoot worlds from their arms.  They have capes that can separate into wings.  The theme song includes phrases from the Ride of the Valkyries.  (More)

Noah's three year appointment was at the beginning of the month.  He is 42.5 lbs and 41" tall.  They did the hearing and vision tests and the nurse was very impressed.  She said usually at this age, they can hear the sounds but not figure out which ear they're hearing it in, and he did great.  The vision test was very interesting for me, but not the eye part.  His vision is fine, but what they do at that age is show the pictures up close first to see what the child will call each object.  So Noah said "apple" and "house" just fine, and then circle was "round" and square was "round."  She went back and forth on those a couple of times and then said, "are those two shapes the same?"  He started to say yes, and then emphatically said No!  So I told him that that shape was called a square and he repeated it.  Then for the real test, a square was the first object.  He hesitated, and then she reminded him of the name.  After that, he named each object perfectly.  At first, it rather bothered me that Noah didn't know the simple shape names, but it just means we haven't gotten to that part yet.  He knows his colors and lots of other things.  So now he knows the name for a square. (: (More)

8/7 - Faith started using the more sign consistently and spontaneously.  She will now also use it to mean "I want that."

8/11 - Faith took her first step.  It was sort of accidental, since she was walking holding to my hand, and I slipped my finger out.  After that first step, she realized she was not holding anyone anymore and she sat down.  On 8/15, she took another step in a similar way.

8/12 - Faith shook her head along with the more sign to indicate "no more".  She has not done it again.

When Noah starts telling a story he begins, "Wunt 'pon time..."

Noah's word for spaghetti is "ebbi." (More)

7/5 - (oh, yes, this means I have not posted in at least a month...) Faith crawled upstairs all by herself (with Mom behind her all the way.)

Noah says he can do it "all mine by self."

Jonathan: "The person I love most after God is Faith."  (More)

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!"

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.

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!

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.

4/10 - Noah comes up to me, winking, and says, "Mommy, me one eye!"  It was hilarious.  (I couldn't wink until first grade.)

4/11 - Guess which story this is, by Noah: "Let me in.  No, no, no.  Blow up house!"

4/20 - What does Noah say when the smoke detector goes off?  "Timer!"

Faith has a neat pincer grasp and feeds herself finger food easily.

4/14 - Faith is starting to pull herself up onto furniture.  The problem is, she can't get back down without falling.

I have moved her on to 12-month size clothes, and her legs still stick out.  She's going to be tall!

Jonathan has been reading more and more.  He's gotten some Step Into Reading: Step 1 books from Grandma and borrowed some from a friend, and he loves it!  4/17 - He called to me from the other room, "What's that crazy word again?  The one with the 'k'? Right. 'Now he knows...'."  I hadn't realized before watching Jonathan read this that a "silent k" turns the present into information.

We borrowed WALL-E from a friend a few weeks ago, and the boys love playing "WALL-E and Eva".  Today, Jonathan made a WALL-E costume out of a cardboard box without any help.  He made a cube of trash out of Duplos, and asked me to make a little paper cockroach for him. He can fold himself all up in it, but then his arms and head come out of the sides and top when he's ready to work again.  There's a little flap in the front for his trash compactor.  He labeled it with his warning light and power meter, and a nice WALL-E on the flap.  Look for pictures and video on the pictures page later.

3/29 - Jonathan was upstairs quietly playing for a very long time.  When he finally came down, he showed us what he had been working on the whole time.  It was a completely filled in color-by-number page.  He read the colors all by himself to see which one went with which number.  Sometimes he helped himself with a clue like "I figured b-l-u-e had to say blue, because 1 was the sky."  He also did a very neat job of coloring within the lines.  He had not been very good at it in the past, but I had never pushed the issue.  I think it was because he didn't really care, and that was one reason I hadn't pushed it. (More)