©2026 The Daleys
Today, Noah is two years old! He is a blessing to our family, and I look forward to watching and helping him grow more and more. Since the second birthday is not much more interesting to the recipient than the first, we'll be having a simple family celebration with balloons and cake. I'm also going to prepare one of his favorite meals, Split-Pea Dahl with Jeera Rice and Naan. What will he say when he finishes his first bowl? "Mo' dah' please!" (Ok., that's being a bit generous. He'll probably start out with just the "dah'" part and then we'll encourage him to say/sign the more and please.)
On 6/20, Noah walked up the stairs without holding onto the wall or railing. His hands were full with a water bottle, and he just carefully stepped his way up.
On Wednesday, we walked to the Shursave for a regular shopping trip. The only difference in this trip was the lack of milk in the bottom of the cart, since I had just gotten some at Trader Joe's. But it made a big difference for Jonathan! He pulled the cart the whole way home by himself, except for the street crossings where I just kept a hand on it for safety. Noah was ambling along at his inquisitive pace, and once we crossed the last street, Jonathan steadily made his way towards home.
We went through Jonathan's piles of saved papers and threw out a bunch. We took pictures of some things and they are in the pictures page under jonathan/2008/scrapbook. Some are labelled "bulk save see file for details" or some such thing. Here are the details.
Jonathan enjoys blocking a doorway and demanding, "Three thousand dollars!" or some such amount. Sometimes he'll block every doorway from the laundry to the bedroom, charging an exorbitant amount of money every time. If there are any complaints, he always says, "Don't worry, it's just pretend money."
So now Noah, always happy to copy his big brother, has started in on the game. I come up from downstairs, and there he is at the top of the stairs with the door closed, his little hand sticking through the crack, saying, "Dah!" (dollar!) So now Mommy has to pay $3001 every time she goes anywhere. (:
I forgot to write this down before; Jonathan can now spell "Jonathan Daley" all by himself. He used to get stuck after "Jon."
He read a book of jokes the other day, and he thought they were hilarious. But he doesn't quite get the concept of "crossing" two things. Jonathan's version: "What do you get when you cross the street with a duck and a cow? Milk and quackers!"
Home stretch, here we are! This will be the first time my third trimester is entirely in the summer, so I was glad for that stretch of cold, rainy May.
Yesterday, Jonathan was playing with a mini flashlight when part of it fell off. He spent quite a while trying to put it back together ("Mommy! The clear part fell off, and when I tried to get that, the bulb fell out. Where does this black piece go?") But he was mostly talking to himself or about it, not asking for help. Then after a while he came to me and said triumphantly that he had fixed it! All by himself. ("I couldn't find where that black piece went, but then I found where it should go and I tested it and it works. It's even brighter than it was before!")
Noah now has many more words that I can write down. They are still mostly only understood by me and Jonathan, but he's using his mouth to communicate. Most words have only the initial consonant and vowel sound (moo for "moose") and some have only part of the word (mo' for "remote") so much of our understanding must be gleaned from context. One example is that (ba-ba) can mean "paper" or "butter" or various other things depending on context.
