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Powered by LifeType7/5 - (oh, yes, this means I have not posted in at least a month...) Faith crawled upstairs all by herself (with Mom behind her all the way.)
Noah says he can do it "all mine by self."
Jonathan: "The person I love most after God is Faith."
Noah referring to Aunt N, "I lot lot lot lot lot like him." (still working on gender specific pronouns...)Noah: "Me are really hungry for grapes."
Noah's word for strawberry (which I will really really miss when he starts to say it right): "ahh-bee-beh-hee"
Noah, for the song about a sheep who goes to school, "Little Mary Lamb".
7/18 - Faith ate two wasabi peas and liked them.
Aunt Prudence and Noah were playing with a puzzle. Aunt Prudence would hide one piece until the end and then do the pull it out of his ear trick. At first Noah was astounded. They played it many times. After a while he figured out the trick and it was so neat for me to watch the discovery. He thought it was the funniest thing.
7/22 - Faith's seventh tooth arrived: bottom, next on the left. Also on this day, she said, "Ba-ba" as she waved goodbye.
7/25 - Faith built a tower ofr four cans, in graduated sizes. She went to put a fifth can up, thought better of it, took the top can off, and then put her new can on.
7/27 - Noah successfully performed a somersault. Jonathan held a tripod for a few seconds. We had fun with gymnastics that evening.
8/1 - Noah gets his first bee stings. It stung him on the arm, then he slapped at it with his hand and got stung also on the hand.
Those are all my notes.
Other stuff is: vacation was fun, pictures will arrive sometime. Faith had a very hard time with all the new people at first, but warmed up by the end.
We all got to see Grampa Daley for the last time. It was sad to see him sick, but we had a nice long visit and clear conversation. At the time, we didn't know how close the end was. He died yesterday, August 4.
Jonathan learned to swim while we were there - that is, he can swim the length of one breath and then has to stand up to breathe again. But it's a good first step.
I made another wedding cake - this time for a couple at church. It seems my trend is one cake every three years. It was a lot of work, as usual, but it came out nicely. Pictures also will be coming. I'd like to thank Aunt N once again for her gift of Wilton decorating supplies many years ago. I do really enjoy making and decorating cakes.
Faith is cruising the furniture, and walking by pushing chairs around or holding onto adult fingers. She loves doing this and beams all the way.
Our green beans are doing fabulously - so sweet and yummy, and plenty to harvest (enough for eating; I'm not ready for freezing/canning yet.)
We've had three zucchini, the tomatoes are sprawly but have a number of fruit, some of which are beginning to turn. Cucumbers have a few baby fruits. The swiss chard that was protected from hail by the bean plants is nice, the other one got pretty beat up. The nasturtiums are finally blooming prolifically. Jonathan and I like the taste, Jon does not.
All the lettuce I cut to ground level before our vacation in anticipation of hot weather and bolting actually grew right back because it was so cool and rainy. The blackberries need a bit more love - a lot of them are kind of dry. But it's the first year in many that they haven't been choked out by roses so this year was a good first start.
There is some giant squash-like plant growing in our compost pile. It will be fun if we get pumpkins from that since our front garden pumpkin plant seems to be growing slowly. I was wondering if the morning glory was going to do much until I actually put up a string for it to climb. Now it's happily growing up and around since it finally has a place to go.
My dill is doing great (sorry I can't share with you, Serina!) and the parsley is starting to do better under the partial shade of green beans. I had thought the little seedlings were dead. It's time for fall planting, so we'll see what I can get done.
Jonathan's reading is progressing nicely.
Jonathan and Noah had a little tutoring session the other day, Noah learning some numerals. It was sweet to listen to. They brought me a paper at the end of it, with samples of Noah's and Jonathan's writing of "1"s.
They are both excited about doing school. Jonathan will be in Kindergarten, though after pondering and looking at things, we've decided against using an official curriculum this year. We'll be reading, and doing the various workbooks we have, and using the Miquon math materials Mom got us for Christmas. Our plans for Noah this year are to teach him the letters and their sounds. Of course, lots of other unofficial learning will take place.
I'm working out a schedule to put order to our days and Jonathan is already interested, checking out my preliminary plan, reading his part and following it as best he could. (When it said, "play with Faith" she was napping, but we're still in the baby stages of this!)
Ok, bedtime. They need Mommy.
What a lovely update to wake up to!
Hooray for not using an official curriculum! I think they are great for ideas and inspiration, and I've learned from experience that organization and consistency are really important -- but your unofficial curriculum is also a lovely thing.
You would have done a nicer job than I did with Janet & Stephan's cake -- but no one could have been more enthusiastic about the decorating than your children were!
You can eat nasturtiums?
Yes, that's why I bought the seeds. Pretty cool, I thought, to grow flowers for our salads. They have a strong peppery taste if you eat them whole.
We picked and ate two cherry tomatoes today, yum-my! Then Faith picked three more green/yellow-green ones before I knew what was happening. She ate half each of two of them and then gave the rest to me. Not nearly as good as ripe ones.
Faith loves blackberries, too, but I don't put her down in the backyard because of the thorns.
I thought your PA grandfather grew nasturtiums. Does any one remember? I even thought it was him that told me you could eat them.
Oh, yes, I remember lots of nasturtiums growing up. I don't remember eating them, however. Then again, we pulled up purslane as a weed (it certainly grew like one) and only recently have I learned that not only is it (supposedly) good to eat, but it has lovely flowers.
As I recall, I didn't like the smell of nasturtiums, though they were pretty. Maybe they taste better than they smell.
I don't think they have any smell. But there are many varieties, and this is the only one I've ever seen/eaten/smelled.
I can't believe little Jonathan's already in kindergarten! How will you keep him on task with Faith and Noah around?
Good question! The key, I think, is to find activities to occupy the younger ones during school time. Noah has his own "school" but so far, Faith has been a distraction. She did spend some of yesterday's session in her highchair with a paper and pencil.
I think Faith will be reading before she can speak, if she's listening in on her brothers' lessons all the time! :) I'm sure it will be easier when they're all old enough to sit still through the lesson.
Maybe Faith could work on the "blanket time" idea.