Daley Ponderings

Well, in the three weeks since I last posted, Joy has made major progress in mobility and the rest of the household is still working to adjust!

9/11 - Joy started crawling longer distances with a cross-pattern belly crawl.

9/13 - Every time we go into PIttsburgh, we cross the Allegheny River.  Faith always asks me what river we are going over.  This day, she said, "Mom, did that be the Alligator River?"  (Now, she says it correctly to the best of her speech ability and names it every time.  She has a little 'Allegheny River' song that she sings.  It sounds like "Ahwee-daynee widduh")

9/15 - For our special time, Noah and I walked to Molinaro's farm to get some corn.  We happened to get there when the farmer's grandson was there to help pick corn.  He offered for Noah to help.  So Noah (and I) learned how to pick corn.  When they had finished getting two sacks-ful, they went back to the shed where they sell it.  I said I wanted to buy a dozen, and he replied that since Noah had picked about a dozen, we should just take them!

9/16 - Joy's third tooth.  Upper right.

9/17 - I discovered that the stinkbug's smell is not actually that bad.  In fact, it smells exactly like cilantro.  It is pretty strong in a room, but it's not nearly as bad as a skunk.

9/19 - Joy started indicating "finished" when on the potty.  That time it sounded like "nih-nih".  9/25 and following, it's been a sign.  Right hand like milk but more open.

9/20 - Faith: "I so likey purple, 'cause it's my favorite."

9/20 - Joy's fourth tooth.  Upper left.

9/20 - Faith did all the buttons on her pajamas.

9/21 - Joy pulled up to kneeling.  This surprised me, I hadn't expected it yet.

9/23 - Joy went from a crawling position to a sitting postion for the first time.  Now she's an old pro.

9/24 - Joy pulled up to standing.  Is it just me, or is all this happening really fast?

9/26 - Joy started creeping on hands and knees, four to six "steps" at a time before going back to tummy-crawling.

Joy explores all over the house now, and will come for me if she wants me and I'm in a different room.  (She usually cries during this and often I'll get her before she reaches me.)  She happily plays with her siblings or by herself on the floor, alternating sitting up to explore an item, and crawling again to find something else interesting.  This means that anything at floor level is waiting for her to find it, including, but not limited to: Legos, papers, shoes, cobwebs, old food, bugs, and...

9/28 - What did I find at the bottom of her potty after a successful catch?  A staple.  Yes, folks, it made my heart skip a beat.  (But it was a closed staple.)

On a more positive note for the end of this post, I will write some Faith-isms that I may not have written down before.  She says, "did be" instead of "was" (as in, "Daddy did be at fireschool yesterday."  She also says "likey" for "like" (see the comment about purple above) and "doody" for "do".  (As in, "I did doody that puzzle, Mommy.")

Also, I just realized I didn't write about Jonathan in this post yet.  Math has been going well since I figured out better what parts of the lesson plan we can skip and also since we've found a game that he likes.  I love hearing his thought processes.  Yesterday, he had a worksheet with problems adding two two-digit numbers together.  So it would go something like this, "70 plus 73.  Well, seventy plus seventy would be fourteen-dee, so that's a hundred and forty, so the answer is a hundred and forty three."

I also discovered that right now, he needs/wants me to be there with him for pretty much everything.  I'm sure eventually he'll get to the point where he can do things like worksheets on his own while I'm doing something else.  So right now, for the most part, each child has his own school time.  This does take up more of my time, but it's less stressful overall than trying to deal with everyone at once.  Still not sure how to get everything else done, but we're working on that.  For right now, it's enough for me that school is going well!