Daley Ponderings

Having a dad in the fire department is educational in more than just fire safety:

5/17 - Jon is called to an accident "involving motor vehicle vs. moose"
5/18 - Jonathan reads about moose and siberian tigers on wikipedia

~5 - Joy says "owee here" = outta here

5/20 - jpd 17 lb on our scale
5/20 - After bikinh home from his ipiano lesson: Noah: "Mom, I fell.  The chain got off all the gears. So I put it back on. The handlebars got crooked from the wheel, too."

5/21 - We have a game on the Kindle that involves both a princess and a knight. Faith was talking about it and called it the princess game.  After listening to her description, Jonathan said, "Oh, you mean the knight game?"

5/22 - I have more to say about attention spans a little later, but here is one example.  Joy peeled garlic for 20 minutes while I was making dinner. (More)

So last week I was worn out with the extra work that unexpected messes bring.  Today I'm tired but happy about it.

Yesterday, Jon left very early to go on the church men's retreat.  Our morning at home started out pretty badly (bickering/fighting) and the boys had to go run around the house in the rain (10 times for Noah, 20 for Jonathan).  But that did its job and the morning chores got done well after that. Then was lunch, afternoon chores, special times, not too eventful (which is good!).

Then, the really good parts started! Jonathan had been wanting to make some French bread, and I suggested he make some for his youth group mock sleepover that night.  So, Jonathan got out my Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. This was his first attempt at making bread by hand, but he had read the directions thoroughly.  His kneading was pretty vigorous ("What's that banging?" I thought from the other room.) but he did a great job.  He started the first rise at 3pm.  I was surprised that he put the dough to rise in a cool place, but he insisted that's what the directions said.  He was right.  Then as I read through, I realized there was no way it was going to be done before his 6:30 start time.  French bread takes a VERY LONG TIME!  So he made graham cracker, chocolate, marshmallow treats. (More)

Thursday morning, we wake up to find mouse droppings and other evidence all over the kitchen.  Result: big kitchen scrubdown.

Friday morning, Noah wakes up to find that the silly putty he fell asleep with is now melted into his pants, sheets, and blanket. Result: big fabric scrubdown.

This morning, the boys wake up with pink, swollen, itchy faces.  It turns out they have been making Indian bows and arrows with poison ivy vines for the bowstrings.  Result: big boy scrubdown.

(We're still in the middle of that.  I haven't yet gone out to spray the loads of poison ivy that turns out to be in their fort area.  And who knows how much poison oil they've tracked all over the house...)

I really hope that tomorrow is a day of rest.

Quote from Vostaas: White Buffalo's Story of Plains Indian Life by William White Buffalo:

"Many Indian boys, and some girls, too, learn to chop wood when they are quite young!  Our mothers do not say, "No! No! That axe is too sharp for you to use!"  They say, "Go chop some more wood.  Is the axe sharp enough?"

Joy says "lellow" for yellow, which appears to be her favorite color.

4/24 - Jeremiah figured out his thumb! It's the left one he sucks. Does this mean I'll finally get a left-hander?

4/26 - Sometimes when school runs past noon, Joy decides to get lunch for herself.  Usually, she doesn't do too badly of a job - cheese and crackers, cereal, an apple or banana.  This day, however, she got into Jonathan's chocolate stash and ate half a milk chocolate ovomaltine bar!

4/29 - Faith came up to me and said, "Mom, say, 'little boat' ten times fast."

4/29 - Jeremiah likes to watch his fist, moving his hand and wrist. I like this stage. I like lots of stages. (:

5/7 - Joy can say the /k/ sound now!  She doesn't yet use it in all the words that have it, but is increasing her use.

5/7 - This was the day Joy got out a nice lunch.  Leftover soup, poured into her own bowl, cheese, which she sliced with the cheese cutter, and a box of oatmeal packets which she opened but didn't prepare.

5/11 - Joy was sleepy, lying on the couch, singing to herself, "Mommy love you, Thay love you, Miah love you, Dad-o love you, Daddy love you, Papa love you, Don love you, Noah love you, Damma love you, etc."

I've noticed I don't have much on Jonathan and Noah lately, so I'll try to think of some of their accomplishments.  But right now I'll write just one becuase it's dinner time - prepared by them!

3/30 - Jeremiah started cooing.  He also can make minimal forward progress along the bed when waking up.

Joy says "my do it" for many things.  She also pronounces "water" correctly now instead of saying "wow".  She's also really good at remembering to say thank you. (Sounds like "dankt you")

4/7 - Jonathan, as we were walking to church: "The air tastes fresh and crisp like a Cortland apple."  (This is from the boy who during school time says he can't write poetry. I think what he really means is he doesn't like to write poetry when constrained by meter and rhyme.)

4/17 - Joy, starting to progress to full sentences, "Uh-oh, where my coat?"

That same evening, Joy put away the pasta sauce from dinner, scooping it out of the pot into a container all by herself.  Yes, there were drips on the table, but not too bad, really.

4/22 - We had a young friend over for lunch, and she wondered if Mr. Daley was going to come have lunch.  Here is Noah's response, summarizing Daddy's life: "He sleeps, then he eats breakfast, then he works, works, works, then he eats dinner, then he sleeps, then he eats breakfast, then he works, works, works, ..."

I might add, on some days, some more "works, works, works" after dinner and before sleep.  I hope his customers are thankful for him!  (We are thankful for them - and him!)

4/22 - Me, to Joy, "Why is your hair all wet?"  Joy, "Um . . . water?"

A picture of Jonathan at about 3-4 months came up on our computer - it has been confirmed: Jeremiah looks like Jonathan!  Joy was convinced it was "Miah".

That reminds me.  Joy says all of our names now: "Daddy, Mommy, Djon, Noah, Thae, Me, Miah"

3/24 - Faith counts to 100 by ones.

3/25 - Joy says "Miah" for Jeremiah.  She started this before that day, but that's the
first day I realized that was what she was saying.

3/25 - Joy sorts the Peanut Butter and Jelly cards by type, all on her own initiative, and
correctly.

3/26 - Noah read Faith's handwriting scripture upside-down.  He only had trouble on the
longest words (like "Scripture").

3/28 - Joy counts, "3, 2, 3, 2, 5, 2, 3..."

Joy now consistently calls Jonathan "Jon". 

She also says "God Bless You" when someone sneezes, and it sounds like "Blebt, bloo"

Oh, yes.  It has been half a year since my last pocket notes post...

9/6 - Joy says "yum" and "yummy", "all done/gone" (sounds like ah-doh), "where shoe?", and "mine" (sounds like my)

9/25 - Faith reading the Bible to Joy: "When you want Mommy to cuddle with you but she can't, you aren't alone because God is with you."

Faith also reminded herself of this as she went down to put tools away in the basement.

9/28 - Noah let me listen to his piano practice and I was impressed with his progress: both hands, dynamics, steady rythmn  (More)

My due date was February 21. Jonathan, Noah, and Faith had all been exactly five days late. Joy was early, but we weren't sure of her date and the more we thought about it the more we figured she probably had been late as well. So we had Linda and Porter schedule their flight to arrive February 15.

Jon had an opportunity to buy some woodshop tools from a friend in Seattle for a very good price (including shipping across the country.) The timing to go learn how to use the tools and pack them up for shipping worked out so that he would be gone from February 7-13. We would have preferred a week earlier, but it was still getting him home before my parents and certainly before the baby really would come. People at church were shocked that he'd go so far away so close to the due date. But we were confident. You can't think early too much or you're about to die of impatience by the time five days late actually comes. (More)

The first blog post in a long time, I realize.  And I won't make any promises about more frequent updates, etc.

I have found that I am writing on facebook more often, and reviewing products online (got a Kindle for Christmas, and so have been reading and reviewing on Amazon) and generally have less time for internet stuff anyway, so haven't been blogging anywhere near as much as we were before.

But, anyway...  Today's topic: stuff food manufacturers put into food that wastes my time since I have to read the ingredient labels in the store.

 (More)

We are still working on renovating our new house, and thus we are still living with Jon's generous parents.  And since we are living here, we are schooling here.  But a comment from his mom gave me some insight into some non-homeschoolers' comments about homeschooling.

We usually "have school" up in our bedrooms, since that is "our" territory while we're living here.  But it is not a soundproof house, and so anything louder than "inside voices" is easily heard from downstairs.

Barbara's comment was, "It's not how I imagined it. Actually, it's how I imagined it might be if I was doing it, and that's why I figured I could never do it."

Yes, folks, homeschooling is not usually a calm, quiet, everyone sitting nicely together doing schoolwork experience.  It involves the toddler getting mad that she can't use all of the math manipulatives at once.  It involves the toddler scattering the ones she does use all over the room.  It involves the third grader who hates writing crying about his assignment and questioning (loudly and with a whiny voice) why Sonlight wants to torture the students with Diamond Notes. It involves the new reader kicking the wall when he gets stuck on a word, and wiggling around generally as he thinks about words.  It involves the preschooler begging for more math right when Mom is in the middle of explaining something to someone else.  It involves any one or more of them pushing the beds apart and spilling the covers on the floor during the course of schooltime. It involves multiple people asking for help (or otherwise interrupting) at the same time. It involves Mom losing her patience and yelling.  It involves Mom wondering if she's going insane and on the worst days crying because she doesn't feel like she's good enough.  On the very worst days, everyone cries.  On the best days, only one person cries.  (I don't think we've had a single school day yet where Joy hasn't cried about something during the course of school time.)

And yet, I would say this year is going well.  We are covering Bible, History, Language Arts, and Math.  Noah is learning to read, Jonathan is learning to write, Joy is learning to be patient, Faith is learning letters and writing and numbers.  I'm learning to keep my patience and correct calmly.  They're all (except Joy) memorizing scripture.  They remember much more math than I would have thought based on our very long summer break.    And we're getting our assignments done before noon!

So if you've ever thought, "Wow, I could never homeschool." The answer is, "You can."  If that's what you decide is what is good for your family, you can do it.  If you decide it's not for your family, don't hold up the homeschooling moms as some otherworldly beings who can manage something you never could.  There are plenty of days we wonder if we can manage it at all.  Just like any mom anywhere in any circumstance.

9/19 - Joy  has been telling me when she needs a new diaper (patting her bottom) but this day, she got out the changing pad and wipes, set up the pad on the bathroom floor, put a new diaper on top of the wipes box, lay down on the pad, and called for me.

9/20 - Noah is definitely our hands-on guy.  He asks for crafts related to what we do in school.  When we read a book about archaeology, he immediately wanted to go dig in the back yard.  He got a trowel and a sieve and a container to hold his treasures and happily dug and sifted for a long time.

~9/20 - Joy can say, "ow".

9/25 - Joy put on her own socks all by herself.  Before this, she had successfully put on mine.

9/27 - Joy says "please" to go with her sign.  It sounds like "wee".

9/27 - Sounding the same, but in a different context.  When she plays with the abacus, she says, "wee, wee, wee" as she movs the beads.  9/28 - She also "counted" "wee, wee, wee" when playing with the corners cards.

9/28 - Faith really wanted to play Corners with me, so I made up a version she can do.  (The "real" game involves finding numbers that add up to 5, 10, 15, or 20.)  We played where we had to match the color and the numeral.  Faith loved it! (More)

I was poking around the logs today, and saw that of the 500 comments that were attempted on the blog yesterday 0 of them were actual people, and the blog successfully marked all of them as spam, and didn't bother asking me to verify that.  I wonder how long that will last.

I regularly see spammers hiring programmers on some job websites that I use, and some of the code that the spammer's use is quite good, so I always need to stay on top of what they are doing.

There have been 112,572 attempted comments on this blog in the last 30 days.  And I suppose that doesn't even count the one that were blocked by the firewall that repeatedly made comments.  I don't have separated logs for those blocks, but just on a server basis.  42,837 IP addresses were blocked in the last month for making frequent comments on the blogs.

Those numbers are pretty incredible, if you think about it - they are just for one blog and server out of the millions of blogs and servers on the internet.

The Google Maps Blog shared this fun use of the maps API - see what the votes look like if different states vote different ways.  Also, see historical data.

These notes are really old, but not lost.

6/7 - Noah's first lost tooth.  Bottom left front.  It took a very long time for it to come out.  He doesn't play with it at all..

Joy was sitting on the couch.  Faith wanted to do a trick, so we asked Joy to get down.  She did it willingly, waited for Faith to do her trick, and then climbed back up, without complaining.

6/20 - Noah's right bottom front tooth came out.  He was eating a cookie.  The tooth was chocolatey, so he went to wash it off, but then the tooth went down the drain.

~6/30 Joy steps down two stairs like a big person.

8/10 - Faith can pump a swing needing only one starter push.

8/14 - Joy was having a fun time in the bath, leaning back, nearly floating on her bath, then putting her face in, over and over.

8/20 - Noah's front right upper tooth is lost.  He says, "I'm going to get money."  Jon asks, "How do you know?"  Faith pipes up, "Because Mommy is a fairy!"

All four of Joy's canines have appeared since the move.  I did not pay enough attention to note dates for them.

8/24 - Noah did the monkey bars at the playground all by himself.

8/27 - We're at the playground.  I can't hear the boys' conversation, but then I hear Noah shouting defensively, "I'm not a homo sapien!"  You might imagine that until he finished the second word I was concerned that Jonathan was talking inappropriately.  But I could not help but laugh when I heard what the accusation had been.

9/1 - We were visiting our next door neighbor's yard sale.  The lady said "hi" to us and I said, "Say, 'hi'".  Faith got all shy, and hid into me.  But then I heard from the stroller, "Hi!"  Joy said it several times!

9/6 - Faith's 4th birthday!  It was a really fun day.  We went for a walk, we went to the playground, Grammy took her out for ice cream.  They had a grand old time with balloons.  We had a dinner of pizza, pasta, and salad.  Then Faith opened her presents, and then we had cherry 'o cheese pie and ice cream with sprinkles. (Faith actually skipped the ice cream in the evening because she had had hers earlier with Grammy).  Faith's review?  "That did be the funnest birthday I ever had!"