Daley Ponderings

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)

3/6 - Jonathan beat Heather in chess, fair and square!

3/18 - Noah said, "I love you" for the first time.  It was to Faith.  Later that day, he said it again to Daddy as he was leaving to go shopping.  He has yet to say it to me, but I know it will come. (More)

We finished our taxes today, and the kids were around while we were doing it, and then we went out to the Olive Garden, since we didn't feel like cooking at 8PM when we finished the taxes.  On the way home, we were talking about how much the meal cost (Jonathan has various data points on how much things cost, so trying to fill that in some more - so the dinner was $26 for the five of us (all you can eat breadsticks and salad) and Jonathan thought that was a lot for not very much food. (More)

2/10 or earlier - Faith can transfer an item from one hand to the other.

2/10 - Jonathan, studying a penny, "This coin says 1 - 9 - 9 - 9.  That's super long ago!"  (I knew my kids would think anything before 2000 was ancient history.)

Since coming home from our trip, Faith has developed stranger anxiety, much earlier than average (or at least than the boys did.)  This hasn't really bothered me (though it bothers the people at church who would like to hold her) since I know it won't be very long before she says, "Bye, Mommy! I going with my Noah!" (that's a Wightman joke)  However, I mention it because of the interesting interactions she has with the mirror.  The boys didn't get stranger anxiety until they had already figured out how a mirror works.  Faith would get quite a concerned look on her face when she saw Mommy "somewhere else" even though I was holding her. I think by now she has gotten the idea, though maybe not 100%

 2/17 - When grocery shopping, I bring Faith's carseat in and clip it into the place where a kid could sit.  This Tuesday afternoon, we were at a store that uses smaller carts and they are not too bottom-heavy.  While I was waiting to sign the pinpad at the checkout, Noah climbed up the side of the cart and brought the whole thing down. Several people saw the beginning of the fall, and I bruised myself clambering over to try to catch it (no success.)  Faith was of course screaming, and I rushed to take her out of the sideways seat and examine her.  Thankfully, she stopped crying a minute or so after I held her, so I knew she was not injured.  Noah said his leg hurt, but he was walking fine, so I knew it would only be a bruise.  Everybody was helpful and concerned, and we were quite shaken, but unhurt.  In addition to the guardian angels whom I am sure were present, Faith's carseat had protected her - it stayed attached to the cart, the handle was up and the sides were high enough to keep her face or head from hitting the floor.  Whew.  This was not the first shopping cart incident my children have been in, but I hope it will be the last.

Noah likes to point out when items match in color or shape.  He is getting there with identifying colors but still mixes up some.

2/20 - Faith looks down when she drops something.

2/21 - I think she is starting to wave at people when they say hi to her.  A man at a store was convinced she waved to him.  It was the first time I'd seen it, and she might have done it a few more times since then.

2/23 - We put new batteries in our Japanese alphabet book.  When it turns on it says (pardon my transcription) "... konichiwa......bohn-eh?"  Noah was playing with it and when it said "konichiwa" he replied, "hi" and after the question, he said, "uh-huh."

2/25 - Jonathan sings and hums many things throughout the day, ranging from super themes to old hymns to praise songs, and now we can add classical music to that list.  At breakfast yesterday, he was humming "Lieutenant Kije." Actually, now that I try to find it online, I don't think it's Lt. Kije.  But our music players are all on random, so it's hard to find what we've listened to.  I'll try to remember to update this when I find out.  My best resource is on her honeymoon at the moment. **Update 3/19/09 - I asked my sister and her guesses did not provide any correct answers.  I tried to search the mp3 player, but it's pretty hard.  I looked through our CD inserts with no sucess.  This afternoon, it finally came up again on our mp3 player!  I ran to check out the listing.  It was from my Greatest Hits - Trumpet CD.  Entrance of the Emperor and his Court from Háry János Suite by Zoltán Kodály.  And do you know what?  The track right before it on the CD is Kijé's Wedding.  God made our brains very intriguing. 

You can hear it starting from minute 1:36 on this youtube video.

2/26 - The difference between states and countries still eludes Jonathan.  He knows we can't spend Canadian dollars here, nor Swiss Francs.  However, today he told me that he couldn't spend his Idaho quarter until we visited Idaho.

I figured I'd be getting some birthday money from someone, so I went ahead and spent it last week, by buying a handful of CDs from Sovereign Grace, which happens to be having a fairly big sale.  It will go for the rest of February, so you should probably check it out.  It seems to be becoming an annual event, so I'll need to remember that, though I don't know if I have bought anything from them recently.  (More)

1/23 - Faith's matching lower tooth came in.

It looks like she's teething again, maybe some top teeth on their way.  She, like Noah my other early teether, is interested in solid foods already.  Jonathan bought her (with his own money) some little cereal pieces, the kind that dissolve quickly.  We give them to her half a piece at a time and she likes to play around with them in her mouth.  Tonight she actually fed herself two of the pieces, grabbing them in her left fist. (More)

While looking at a dollar coin, Jonathan said, "I think it has a picture of Obama or something", (really, it's Andrew Jackson).

"Switzerland laughs and American laughs are the same; only the language is different.  I made my silly face at people in Switzerland, and they laughed like a regular American."

I am now on vacation and so can spare a few minutes to type up the notes that have been hanging in my pocket for a while.  I will apologize to my readers for making them wait so long, but I will not feel guilty.  Blogging is something most mothers in the history of the world did not have on their list of responsibilites and I will not let it grab a top priority from other important things.  (More)

I have heard people debate about whether not being able to hear a child playing is worse than hearing one that is really loud.  I can tell you that I would take either one over waking up to sounds of water splashing around.  (More)

...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)