Daley Ponderings

Can I condense three weeks of activities into one post?  We'll see how it turns out.  One thing we discovered at Christmastime is that Noah loves cocktail sauce.  He just dipped his finger in and licked it off, licked the bowl clean and wanted more!

We had Christmas at home just the four of us, and then we headed for New England on the 27th.  After a very good (read uneventful and happy boys) 11 hour trip, we stopped at DSTB's in CT, where we got to see Grandma and Dad-o as well as the aunt, uncle and cousins.  It was a lovely if short visit.  A highlight is that B and Jonathan ran up and down the stairs 112 and 61 times respectively.  This was at my suggestion that Jonathan run up and down ten times to get some energy out.

In the morning, we left after breakfast (and some computer diagnostics - I was about to say fixing, but I'm not sure it was successful.)  The three hours to Grammy and Papa's house seemed slightly long, but when we got close, Jonathan was so excited to see the snow, he occupied himself by singing a happy snow song along the way.

There was about three feet of snow on the ground when we got there and another foot or more came down in the next few days.  We had a blast playing in the yard, making a snow cave, pits, paths, walls, etc.  Jonathan and Jon made a snowman walking a snowdog on the first day, I think it was.

Maybe that was the second day, because the first day was the Daley Christmas. Erica and Rob were there, along with Grandpa Daley and Aunt Eleanor.  The next day, Aunt Susan and Uncle Rod came over.

Sunday was the "Leftover" pageant - a bunch of stuff had gotten snowed out earlier in December, so they did it again.  But this time Jonathan got to be a sheep and sing with the Joyful Noise choir.

New Year's Eve we spent with the McQuillans, friends Jon met in the college years, but they live not too far from his parents' house.  We left around 11pm and were asleep before the official new year.

The rest of the days were full of playing, talking, resting, joining Grammy in some of her regular activities.

Friday we went skiing.  Jonathan was all gung ho to ski straight down the hill as fast as he could, but we spent the time teaching him how to ski with control.  Grammy's friend Jay is an instructor at the mountain and he spent a good amount of time with Jonathan.

Noah stayed in his skis for about five minutes and then he was done.  We thought we'd have him try this time, since Jonathan did so well when he was two.  But I realized when I was putting Noah's boots on him that Jonathan could talk when he first went skiing, but Noah couldn't tell us what he was thinking (how the boots fit, for example.)   So we traded off skiing/being with Noah.  I did two runs by myself at the end, which was fun, but the wind was very cold on my forehead, so I didn't do a third run.  That was good timing, because everyone else was ready to go.

Noah has been chewing on his forefinger a lot recently, so I finally decided to feel if there was any tooth activity.  Sure enough, the bottom two-year molars are working their way through, and a couple of days later I felt a top one.  I'm sure the other top one is not far behind.  He's been very good about it, mostly just chewing, and not complaining.  But I suspect this is the reason for the increase in night nursing which is taking a toll on my sleep.  I'm thankful for naps!

I'm not sure why it took me so long to try this, but we are doing more signs with Noah beacause it's pretty clear that he's not ready for talking yet.  He's very quick to pick up on the signs at this age, which is encouraging for us all.  We were playing with Jonathan's police station lego set and Noah was enjoying the doors that open and close.  He kept closing them but had a hard time opening, so was asking me.  I finally showed him the sign for open and after that he would sign open, please and the game was much more fun. (Eh,eh gets really tiring after a while)  So now we just need to remember the signs so we can teach him.

Friday, the 11th was the day to leave.  There was freezing rain in the morning and a two hour school delay (which meant delay for piano lessons, too.)  Grammy took Noah for a breakfast adventure, but I had an adventure getting him to the car.  The driveway was icy, but I wasn't thinking about that, so down we went.  I landed on the elbow of the arm that was carrying Noah (he just bonked his head on the car tire.) He recovered faster than I did, but I was able to get up and buckle him in.  My elbow was sore for the rest of the day, but better after that, so I'm thankful.

By the time the car was packed and we were ready to go, the rain was no longer freezing and the roads were clear.  We stopped by Schenectady, NY to have lunch with Sara.  Google maps seems to like the most optimal distance route without considering ease of following directions. Thus we had a little adventure, but I'm sure we were very close to where Dad used to live, because we saw signs with Niskayuna on them...

We talked politics a little with Sara (oh yeah, we were in NH for the primary, which Jon has written about in the random stuff post, so I won't.) Then we headed for Oxford, NY and stayed with the Leachs which was fun.

In the morning we headed for Harrisburg, where we attended a meeting of an organization that is working on legislation for midwives in PA.  It was long, but we got to talk to people, and they were happy to have some Pittsburgh/Western representatives there.

It was late before we headed home, but we stopped at Waffle House for dinner, which was pretty fun.  We arrived home safely at around 11pm.