Daley Ponderings

Noah's three year appointment was at the beginning of the month.  He is 42.5 lbs and 41" tall.  They did the hearing and vision tests and the nurse was very impressed.  She said usually at this age, they can hear the sounds but not figure out which ear they're hearing it in, and he did great.  The vision test was very interesting for me, but not the eye part.  His vision is fine, but what they do at that age is show the pictures up close first to see what the child will call each object.  So Noah said "apple" and "house" just fine, and then circle was "round" and square was "round."  She went back and forth on those a couple of times and then said, "are those two shapes the same?"  He started to say yes, and then emphatically said No!  So I told him that that shape was called a square and he repeated it.  Then for the real test, a square was the first object.  He hesitated, and then she reminded him of the name.  After that, he named each object perfectly.  At first, it rather bothered me that Noah didn't know the simple shape names, but it just means we haven't gotten to that part yet.  He knows his colors and lots of other things.  So now he knows the name for a square. (:

Dr.Anderson recommended testing for lead since we're in a new house and Faith's level was elevated.  But that came back "very low" so that's great.  Noah did very well with that, even though the nurse had to milk his finger to get enough.

Faith's one year appointment was last Tuesday.  She is 24 lb 4 oz, and 30.5" which is exactly on the 90th percentile for both.  She had rather a hard time of it since the first thing we did was put her down on the table to measure her height.  The last time she was on that table, she got a shot - and she remembered!   Everything is great with her, too, and she didn't have to get any prickings at all this appointment.

Notes:

8/29 - Noah colored a picture neatly, with most of the crayon marks staying within the lines.

8/31 - Faith walked to Daddy with many stepsl

9/1 - Faith walked to Jonathan.

Since then she has done a lot of walking practice and she can consistently take 6-7 steps at a time.  She can also sometimes catch herself from falling.

9/10 - Faith climbed up our playground slide.  She has done this a lot since then.  She loves to climb up and then let go and slide down feet first on her belly.  She'll do it over and over again.

9/11 - Faith's 8th tooth finally broke through.  It had been showing under the gums for at least three weeks. What a pain!  Now I think she has molars on the way.

9/12 - Noah buttered his toast all by himself.

9/14 + 9/16 - One of the boys' daily chores is making their beds in the morning.  For Jonathan, this means whatever bed he happened to sleep in the night before.  Sometimes he sleeps upstairs in "his own bed' and sometimes he's down with Noah in our room.  The way they make their beds is to spread the blanket over the pillow (and as far down as it goes from there.) So on the 14th, Jonathan made his side of the bed and also made Noah's. We thought that was very kind of him.  Then on the 16th, Noah returned the favor!  It is so sweet to see them thinking of each other.

9/16 - A friend gave us a handwriting workbook which we have been using with Jonathan during school time.  A previous session, Jonathan had insisted that his three-stroke "k" was a much better way than the two-stroke in the book.  It was true, he was neater doing it the way he had always done, but I figured in the long run, the two-stroke would be faster.  I told him we would ask Daddy about it.  So on the 16th, the consensus was that he could do it whichever way he wanted.  Lo and behold, by the time Jonathan finished his two rows of "k"s he said to me, "Hey, Mom, it is nicer to do the two-strokes instead of three!"

Sometimes when Noah says thank you it comes out "you thank" which in his pronunciation sounds like "eoo hee."  Just so you know if he says that after you give him something...

Recently, when talking about numbers, the idea of place value has come up.  Jonathan had not really understood what I was talking about, so yesterday during our school time, Jonathan and I played a little place value game that I made up.  We had so much fun that I thought I'd actually blog about it!

I took two each of the numerals 0-9 from our Lauri number puzzle and set them in order in the middle of the table. Then I took two small pieces of paper and set the side by side in front of us.  Then I told him to "write" 1.  Then add one to that number, then add one, etc.  He replaced each numeral with the next one until we got to 9 - how do you add one?  He already knows that nine plus one is ten, but had trouble making it in my new format, but that worked out quickly.  Then I asked him to add one to that number.  He replaced the 1 in the tens column with a 2.  So we talked about that - he saw right away that it said 20 instead of 11.  We played at adding one, and sometimes two or five for a while, and then I asked him to add ten to the number which required some more thought and explanation.  Then we added tens and ones until 99, Jonathan's understanding increasing all the way (it is SO FUN to watch!)  "ok!" I say, "add one to that number!"  "Ah-ha!" he replies.  And he replaced the 9s with 0s and put a 1 in front of the first 0, but still on the "tens place" paper.  I explained that we really couldn't do that, so I got out another paper to be the hundreds place.  And so we continued, adding tens, ones, fives, threes, until he really got the idea.  After 199 I asked him to add one, and he was thrilled to figure that one out and he did it exactly right.  So that was the end of the game for that day, but I'm sure we'll play it again.

Later we worked on factors with cuisenaire rods, after my off-hand comment that 30 (my next birthday age) was divisible by 1,2,3,5... "Why not four, Mommy?"  Homeschooling is so fun!

So this is already a crazy long post (for me) so I'll just quickly say that Jon got "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day" from the library, and I did it with Noah on Thursday.  It worked great!  He had one accident Thursday, and one yesterday - none since then, and no messy underwear, and dry underwear through the night! He even went to the bathroom in the middle of the night last night.  Maybe some time I'll write out my thoughts on the method and our morning together, but not right now, sorry.  But let me say this - I'm very thankful for the success!