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!"

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.

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.

4/23 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."

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)

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.

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)

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)

...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)

Noah loves to help Daddy with the plumbing in the new house.  In fact, he had a hard time making the decision about whether he should stay home and plumb with Daddy or come to the zoo with the rest of us.  (After Jonathan exclaimed about the baby elephants, Noah eventually decided to come to the zoo.)

He likes to put on flux, and fetch tools for Daddy, and he is very good about avoiding the end of the hot torch and potentially hot pipes.  He will sit for hours on the floor with scraps and tools, fitting pieces together and taking them apart.  He usually knows exactly where the tape measure, flashlight, and screw driver are at any given time.

 In other news, people have been wondering how Noah has been taking the move.  At first, he didn't really know what was going on.  But the first day that the furniture was out of the new house, he was quite startled to see our bedroom empty.  I had asked him if he knew where the camera was (we had lost it a couple of days before moving day but as you can see we found it again.)  He brought me all the way upstairs (I'm sure he remembers seeing the case which had been in our bedroom.)  When he got three steps from the top of the stairs, he stopped and wouldn't budge further.  He reached for me, saying, "Bed? Bed?"  When I picked him up, he clung to me very tightly, continuing to wonder where the bed was.

However, it hasn't taken him long to get used to the new house.  The other day when we drove in from some errand, he exclaimed, "Home!"

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.

Having prenatal appointments every week is not giving me much leeway for blogging.  I just had another appointment today and realized that I have not blogged about last week's.

First, Noah had his 2 year appointment last Wednesday.  35.5 lb, 37"  He didn't like the poking and prodding, nor especially the ear flashlight.  But he got three pretzels at the end because the nurse didn't realize that the doctor had already given them out.

Then I had my 37 week appointment.  This one was with one of our favorite midwives in the practice, and we went over the birth plan with her.  One of the important points is that Jonathan gets to be the one to announce the sex of the baby.  Talking about our family being there, the midwife got excited, and said, "I hope I get to be there for your birth, it sounds like it will be so much fun!"  My friend said, "Then you should hope she's there, too."   They all got to hear the heartbeat again, and the baby was very active under all the prodding by midwife and brothers.

We have finished doing the patch painting in the two bedrooms and hallway.  I enjoyed having the low-VOC paint because I do like painting, though it is more work to have the boys help.  It's medium for Jonathan, but he still had a hard time keeping track of drips.   Noah had to be completely supervised, that is, holding onto the brush or roller with Mommy.  Even then, he'd get distracted and not even watch what we were doing. The color matching in the green room (our bedroom) was perfect, the purple hallway was nearly perfect, but the blue was just light enough that you can tell.  But I'm not going to do anything about it now.

Most stuff is set up, though I just brought a bunch of kitchen stuff from Carroll St which needs to be put away.  We need to get another bookcase, and when the plumbing is done Jon will make a shelf for the home entertainment stuff.  That will then be nearly all the boxes unpacked.

Today was the 38 week appointment, uneventful and quick.  Baby is estimated to be 8 lbs already.  I did lose one pound since last week, but the midwife said she wasn't surprised in the least given all I've been doing and said don't even think about worrying about that.  So I won't. (:  My blood pressure was still great, even though I drove today.  Oh yeah, this was the first time driving directly from the new house to the birth center.  It took 42 minutes.  But I won't take the 31st street bridge again because the light there at 28 was 4 minutes long.  It might be the same time taking 40th street bridge, but at least you're going somewhere and not sitting at a light.  We'll try that next week, I guess.

Ok, time to gather dinner for my crew.