Daley Ponderings

Jon made Jonathan a lightswitch stick so that he (Jonathan) can turn on and off the lights himself. It is a dowel with a loop of wire fastened to the end. When Grammy and Auntie E were here, Jonathan demonstrated the first observed completion of the USA puzzle all by himself. Before, I had... (More)

I was talking with a friend the other day about grandmothers knitting and sweaters they give for Christmas. Her comment was, "I loved my grandma, but those things were hideous." Then I related how I always loved the things my grandma knitted for me. I was just thinking about it again recently.... (More)

Christmas Eve, we went to a church family's party and then had a candlelight service at church. Christmas Day, there was no service (we meet in a school and they didn't want to make the janitor work on Christmas) so we had the day at home. We woke up and opened stockings (sample toothpaste for... (More)

Jonathan has been saying, "I'm very happy!" "I'm glad" and similar phrases. He can sing Rock A Bye Baby for the most part and he likes to rock his teddy bear ("Rock a bye teddy bear") and baby Joseph and also to have us rock him. I'm going to attempt to write it the way it sounds because it is... (More)

When I told Jonathan about Dad-o's conference in New York, he asked, "Where New York?" So I showed him New York on his US puzzle. While we were there, he showed me New Hampshire and Massachusetts, entirely on his own initiative. The next day, he picked up a piece from the puzzle and ran into the... (More)

When Jonathan is talking about zippers or cords, he says, "Zip it down" instead of unzip and "Plug it out" instead of unplug. Makes sense! Yesterday, Jonathan juiced some pineapple slices all by himself - taking out the plunger, placing in a slice of pineapple, pushing it down with the plunger,... (More)

Based on an excruciating headache Wednesday afternoon, October 12, that did not go away, Jon and I headed to West Penn Hospital Emergency Room at 10:30pm. A friend came to the house to watch Jonathan while he slept. Here is an aside - it was so good for Jonathan that he did not come, he would... (More)

We recently switched our automobile insurance to State Farm, because Amica doubled their rates on our homeowners policy, a bait-and-switch sort of thing - they told me the estimated rate, and I agreed, spent a month trying to get the inspector to come look at the house.The only thing he pointed... (More)

On Tuesday, I just randomly started singing "All Around the Mulberry Bush" without really thinking about it. When I finished, Jonathan said in a singy voice, "monkey, weasel, monkey, weasel!" That evening when we were putting on shoes to go home from the Kuhns, Jonathan said, "right foot" and... (More)

Jonathan was playing with Heather's hair band, and was calling it a bandand, his word for rubber band, (close to his word for baid-aid: bandane)Heather encouraged him to call it a rubber band, and he made the face that means, "that word is too hard for me to say", so I just said, "rubber", but he... (More)

Sunday after church Jon suggested we go sailing again since we did not make it the day before. After lunch, we headed out again, this time to North Park because it is closer. The wind was strong, the best we've had in Pittsburgh so far. However, it was also gusty and changed direction a lot in... (More)

Jonathan now identifies two of his butterfly bits by name: "morpho" for brown morpho and "lady" for painted lady. By the way, I always type his words the way he means them, but often they are not exactly like that. For example, these two words actually sound like "my-foh" and "yay-dee." He has... (More)

On Tuesday, Jonathan discovered how to stand on tiptoes, and he thought it was great fun and asked me to "Watch!" him and share in his joy. Yesterday, he figured out how to open the front gate. So now keeping him inside the fence is truly a matter of discipline and not force. But he understands... (More)

Jonathan and I were taking a bath this morning when he stuck his face in the water and blew bubbles, his own idea! He has been much more willing to explore floating and "swimming" since he played in the Kuhns' medium sized kiddie pool the other week. With all the splashing, we had drained the... (More)

It seems that lots of people have trouble typing in keywords into search engines that result in the hits that they want. Every once in a while I have to go to the second page of results, but generally things are available on the first page.For example, I was recently asked, "How do I get... (More)