Daley Ponderings

At church on May 7, Jonathan washed his hands in the bathroom completely independently for the first time - turning on the water, reaching the sink, reaching the soap, turning off the water, drying his hands. I offered to lift him up as usual, but he said, "I can do it!" And he did!
The other day he was playing outside and I had gotten the watering can out of the shed but not yet taken it up to the porch. After initial supervision, he was able to fill it at the bathtub and carry it out all by himself. This enabled him to do it as many times as he wanted, instead of being limited by Mommy's willingness to fill it. He also discovered that if the screen door is closed slowly, it does not latch, so he made sure each time that he left it open for himself.

I was telling the story of his conversation with a young friend about how to pronounce "giraffe" (I thought we had written this in the blog somewhere, but cannot find it) and in the process of explaining, I said it sounds like it starts with a "J" After listening to me, he actually pronounced it correctly! Now he says "J for giraffe" even though I do continue to explain that it really starts with a "g." It's one of those strange English-ities that he'll get eventually.

I have been continuing to explain to him about birth. The other day, out of the blue, he said to me, "When you have the baby, sometimes it will hurt." Then a few days ago, I was showing him the pictures from A Child Is Born and he was more interested than before. He was looking at the mothers' faces, noticing when they were working hard and when they were happy after the baby was born. He said he would like to see the placenta, and even cut the cord (maybe with help, I've heard it's pretty tough.) We started to watch a birth video last night, but it turned out to be a very graphic/sensual one. Some others we've seen have been better and I'm looking into borrowing them again.

As I was looking around for that story about giraffes, I noticed the huge development in speech and sentences that Jonathan has made since October. He is now speaking in full, long, complicated sentences most of the time. Here are a few quotes I was already going to post, and the first one especially illustrates this beautifully.

It has been raining the last couple of days (very much needed here!) and we have a gutter that drips noisily onto the spout below. This morning, Jonathan heard it and said, "Was it somebody bouncing a ball on the sidewalk?"

Saturday, I went downstairs and noticed that the diaper covers were washed. Jonathan remarked, "Daddy did it. It was gracious for you."