Daley Ponderings

I am now on vacation and so can spare a few minutes to type up the notes that have been hanging in my pocket for a while.  I will apologize to my readers for making them wait so long, but I will not feel guilty.  Blogging is something most mothers in the history of the world did not have on their list of responsibilites and I will not let it grab a top priority from other important things.

As I type, Faith is giggling with Grammy.  No success yet in catching the giggles on video.

Noah now has a word for Jonathan.  It sounds mostly like "ah" only with a French nasal/almost silent "n." Sometimes he also says, "Ohnny."

Jonathan calls chocolate covered mint creme candies, "New York Peppermint Patties."

Sometime in October or so, it felt chilly out, but our wireless outdoor thermometer said 78.  Jon went out to discover what the problem was and found out that a bird had made a nest under the eaves right there and the bird was heating up the sensor!  He moved the sensor and the real temperature was revealed as 59.

Jonathan has been working on:

skip counting by 2, 3, 4, 5, 10.  He just got a CD with some songs and can go by 3s to 33 quickly. 10s are fast and 5s are close.  Twos are pretty fast as well.

He can do 100 piece puzzles easily by himself.

He read the first three pages of Grizzwold.

He's learning about fractions.

He likes writing notes and recipes.

He has a couple of math workbooks and is working on simple addition and subtraction.

He loves playing with the Cuisennaire Rods, figuring out addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems.

He can count backwards by 1s from 20 and by 10s from 100.

He will sleep upstairs in his own bunk as long as it's not too cold for cuddling.  He doesn't come down until a reasonable hour and enjoys being up there.

On his birthday, he said at the end of the day, "It's fun being five!"

Noah's news:

He loves to wash dishes, and sometimes does a thorough job.

He can do individual-piece/knob puzzles and did our six-piece US puzzle.

He is beginning dressing independence, though still needs/wants plenty of help.

He likes to copy Jonathan, specifically in words, repeating every third word or so of Jonathan's stream-of-talking.  They also like to play a repeat game together where Jonathan says, "Noah, say, 'candy cane.'" and Noah will do his best.

12/16 - Noah indicated that he wanted to drive somewhere.  I said he needed to wait 14 years before he could drive, and he said, "Ten?"

His talking continues to improve.  If he can say all the sounds in a word, he'll say the whole word.  For example, "ten" from the above story is complete, where it used to be "teh."  His most recent accomplishment is a nice two-syllable "happy."  He'll come up to me and give me a hug and say, "ha-ppy!"

He points to the painting of the Maggie P and says, "P!"