Daley Ponderings

This is the hardest one I have ever worked on. [ Update 10/24/2006: thanks to you all reading this post and posting other links, I have since found more interesting ones -- look through the comments - the one posted on October 9th appears to be pretty hard, though maybe I just made a mistake on... (More)

On Friday, we all had fun on the Kuhns' new indoor trampoline. I showed Will how we used to count while jumping, and he jumped and counted (by ones) all the way to 100. He did not make himself start over if he missed a jump, he just kept jumping until he remembered the next number. But Alissa... (More)

Found an interesting spyware/virus/malware/etc at the Quinlisks yesterday. It was a "Browser Helper Object (BHO)", a method of getting your own code put inside of the windows explorer, and thus pretty hard to remove.They run Ad-Aware every once in a while to clean up their computer,... (More)

I got a notification from a credit bureau today saying that a new account had been opened by: Verizon Pen, PO BOX 165018, COLUMBUS, OH 43216. Since I haven't changed phone service since last year, it seemed odd that there would be a new account from Verizon.My mortgage company had their backup... (More)

Colin Portnuff, a guy who uses an AAC (alternative augmentative communication) device to communicate, was recently at a conference that some guys from my company (DynaVox) also went to. He has ALS , which is a degenerative disease of the brain. A number of our customers have ALS; I am not... (More)

I wrote it out formally about a year ago but it never got onto the blog. So below is the story. I'll post a comment on Jonathan's first post with a link to this one. Jonathan's Gentle Birth by Heather Daley This is Jonathan's birth story, but to really appreciate it, the... (More)

Somehow I missed it when Janet posted her visited states post. I think I have this right, though I don't remember all of these states, so maybe it doesn't count if I just know that I drove through them but can't remember anything about them. (my visited country map wouldn't be that exciting,... (More)

A woman I know has been having breastfeeding troubles with her three month old. She firmly believes in the superiority of breastmilk and nursing, and so has persisted through the discouragement (implicit and from other people, including pediatrician) and is using a lactation supplementer instead... (More)

That statement by Jonathan is what I woke up to from my nap this afternoon. It has worked before - to let him play quietly by himself while I take my nap. But today, well, he just tried to be a little more independent than he's truly capable of. He crawled up onto the bed and stood up next to... (More)

We went to the Kuhns' for dinner Thursday evening and at one point Will wanted to go out and ride his bike. Previously, he and Jonathan had been playing with playdough. I asked Jonathan to wash his hands (it was homemade dough and goopy) while I washed the cookie cutters and other playdough... (More)

Sunday, February 19, 2006, Jonathan went skiing for the first time. Just after 11am, we headed east to Seven Springs, which is the closest/best mountain to Pittsburgh. We arrived at the parking lot at 12:45, then took a shuttle to the lodge. We got off at the wrong place and had to walk to the... (More)

Posting this, since it took me a long time to find this site today when I wanted to stop my home computer from annoying me with the reboot dialogs every couple of minutes.If you never reboot your computer, it might be a good idea to not implement this solution, since you might forget to ever... (More)

Wednesday was the second prenatal appointment. It was just barely starting to snow when we left Pittsburgh, and by the time we got to the small country road where our midwife is, it was a little slippery. Jon is good at driving in snow, but he still missed the turn into their driveway. Our... (More)

Jonathan can really have a conversation on the phone now. He even has good one-sided ones when he is just pretending. For example, "Hello, Mrs. Grover! How are you? You're feeling good. Good!" "Hello, Grandma. I love you, too. Bye." On Tuesday, Jonathan asked me to get the lotion for him,... (More)

Jonathan likes to play with the water in the sink, using cups and sponges, etc. I have a "three strikes" rule - after water gets on the floor three times, he has to turn it off and stop playing. Recently, he has actually finished his play before getting to the third time. Christmas Eve, he... (More)