Daley Ponderings

One reason Jonathan talks so well is because we talk to him like a real person. Children learn by hearing and by imitating. It is sometimes amusing to hear the things that he says. For example, he got a valentine's day card from Aunt Ellie, and as he saw the stickers on the back and was... (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)

Well, I followed the directions on one of those "speed up firefox" pages, and found a setting that broke stuff, at least minimally, and it was hard to diagnose. The symptom was a red line through the padlock icon when viewing an ssl page that I wrote in PHP. If I reloaded the page, it would go... (More)

Like so many other articles on this subject, I will start by saying that I looked at various documents, but none of them worked perfectly for me, so I will write up my own steps. Most of the regular readers of this blog will not care at all about SMTP authentication, TLS, SSL, port 25, 465, 587,... (More)

Jonathan was playing with his farm puzzle, pulling out each piece, naming it, and making the sound that the animal makes. "Rooster, cocka-doo-doo" "Sheep baa" When he got to the pig, he only named it, so I asked him if he remembered what a pig says. If he did, he wasn't saying, so I told him.... (More)

In addition to not using baby talk (Would my wittle Jonafan wike a nice kissy-poo?) it is a good idea to go even further and not use baby slang. Here is a personal example of how Jonathan learned the correct words instead of a word he would have to grow out of someday. On the way home from the... (More)

While it is impossible to keep up with all of the new words Jonathan can say, there are interesting stories every once in a while (how "interesting" is measured is probably different among the different readers of this blog) and so I like to share them. Also, I realized that sometimes we say he... (More)

Jonathan has fallen in love with Dr.Seuss. He will quote from the books while we are doing other things, and laugh - "Pat, cat, No, that!" He also can identify most of the words in Hop On Pop, likely at this point by the illustrations rather than the words themselves. One thing that I really... (More)

Jonathan is great at couplets now, for example, "yellow button" "dry diaper" "one hand." He is also increasing his use of complete sentences. One thing he said yesterday was "Yes please, Daddy" which is the first time ever that he has said all three in a row like that for a request. (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)

On Monday, Jonathan said what sounded like "van-fan" so I tried to figure out what he meant. He pointed to the shelf and said it again, maybe differently. I looked up, and there were the bits - works of Rembrandt! I said, "Rembrandt?" And he said, "yes, Rembrandt!" (or a close approximation.)... (More)

It is a new month, and therefore, a new point on my email graph . A couple interesting things this month: one, you can tell I went on vacation, and probably also that I knew Heather was gone the week before, so I wasn't emailing her as much either. Two, spam has now hit the 30% mark (note: the... (More)