Daley Ponderings

9/13 - A Friday. Jonathan had been asking me if he could read Harry Potter for a while.  I told him I needed to talk to Daddy about whether we thought he was ready, but I kept forgetting.  The strategy that worked was asking me in Daddy's presence so I didn't have time to forget.  So the decision was "yes, but you have to finish all your school and chores first."  Immediately after completing those in record time, he ran to the library.  Jonathan proceeded to read the first Harry Potter book in four hours.  He started book four by Saturday evening. In these first two days, whenever he talked about the story, he kept calling Harry "Arthur".  Daddy made him take a break from the constant reading on Sunday, but Monday (after school) he was at it again.  He finished the whole series the next Saturday 9/21.  So that's an average of a book a day.

9/16 - Jonathan whistles the Imperial March from Star Wars while reading Harry Potter.

9/16 - Talking about a jelly we opened, Jonathan comments, "I always thought it was compassion fruit."

9/17 - Jonathan: "Grammy's apple crisp is hard to beat, but I can say, apple pie is delicious."

9/19 - Faith, to me as we're rocking together, "We should cuddle much oftener."

9/19 - Joy, showing me a little office setup she made, and pointing, "Dis my piu-wer, dis my phone." (This is my computer, this is my phone.)

9/19 - Noah lost his left bottom 2nd incisor.  Now he has three spaces where those second incisors have not grown in yet.  I think his mouth is waiting for his jaw to grow a bit more.

Joy thinks all big trucks are fire trucks.

9/22 - Joy and Jeremiah are in the kitchen, I'm in the living room. Jeremiah starts crying, so I ask Joy, "What's up with Jeremiah?"  Her perfectly true, but not too helpful answer, "'Miah cying."

9/22 - Faith gets pinworms.  This is six weeks after Joy had them, right on time.  We all take the medicine (except Jeremiah) and I try my best to clean and wash everything.  Please let's not get this again!

10/1 - JPD claps, see below.

10/3 - JPD signs "more" - looks like clapping.  10/18, he signed with one fist and one flat hand.

10/3 - JPD likes to play a bouncy game.  He stands on your lap and jumps up and down.  If you bounce him really high every few bounces, he likes it best.

10/4 - 10/6 - Church marriage retreat.  Very nice time overall.  The four older ones stayed with Grammy and Papa, and Jon and I took Jeremiah with us.  We drove with another couple from church. Very cool house we all stayed in.  Encouraging conversations, fun to get to know more church people better.  On the way home, I saw a real, live moose for the first time!  Our friend pointed it out, and I saw teeny glimpse.  Neither of us were totally sure it wasn't a statue in someone's yard, so Jon turned around to get a better view.  By the time we got back, it was at the edge of the yard, and by the time we pulled over to turn around again, it was crossing the road, so Jon blinked his lights at the oncoming car so there wouldn't be an accident.  There wasn't.  It was a female, so I didn't get to see a big rack, but it was still a neat sight.

10/6 - Jeremiah finally gets his first tooth!  bottom right.  I am glad he waited, though, because his jaws are so strong his bite is enough to hurt even without little knives in them.

10/8 - We get out the next size clothes bin for Faith.  It has the Smithsonian sweatshirt that Uncle Josh bought Noah.  He doesn't remember it, and I was pregnant with Faith that trip, so she certainly doesn't remember it.  So, for explanation, I asked, "What's the Smithsonian, Jonathan?"  His reply, "The coolest place in the WORLD!"

~10/8 - Joy had a cold, but did not need any nebulizer treatments!

10/9 - Jonathan explored a box of keepsakes that we just unpacked, reading the labels that explain each one.  Then he got excited and, holding up my piece of the Berlin Wall, he exclaimed, "Here's a piece of ancient history!"

10/11 - You may like to say this is a mom wishing she heard her baby talk, but you can judge for yourself when I've told you the outcome.  I'm nursing Jeremiah on the bed.  He turns over and has some gas, and says something that sounds like "gas".  Then he says, "ba, ba, ba, ba."  I ask him if he has to go to the bathroom.  He changes his syllables, and they sound like, "yeh, yeh, yeh, yeh." Did he just answer my question? The only way to know is to act on it.  I put him on the potty and he produced the desired results!

10/12 - We head up to Ontario to visit Jon's aunt and family for Canadian Thanksgiving.  It was a fun time overall, but Jeremiah had gotten Joy's cold and had some pretty miserable nights.  The highlight of the trip, though, was a trip to the Steam Museum.  Our tour guide, Nancy, was enthusiastic and informative and she loved interacting with our kids.  We had such a good time.  It's machines like that that got me interested in being a mechanical engineer!

10/15 - Long drive home, but we made it, arriving just before 10pm

10/16 - My mom arrives 2pm.  I had gotten her room ready before we left for Canada.  You can read her posts about our adventures here so far, but I do have one more note.

10/17 - Joy: "I like Grandma in my house!"