©2026 The Daleys
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.
Saturday, May 17 was a big day for both sides of the extended family.
Jonathan wants me to write that he says, "blaller, blaller, hee haw haw."
Noah, on the other hand has some more words and signs. Well, one sign, cereal. Words are "down" (dow), "beep" and "bird" which really sounds like (bee.)
I was supposed to have my appointment last week, but that was the morning I woke up sick. So it was rescheduled for yesterday. I measured big, but I knew I would and she wasn't concerned when I told her I always measure big. My blood pressure was exactly the same as last time. We all (except Noah) got a turn with the fetoscope and got to hear the baby's heartbeat.
Life cereal was on sale for $2, and we found a $1 off coupon inside one box. So tonight, Jonathan bought a box of cereal with his own dollar bill. We all walked to the store together. Jonathan found the cereal aisle by himself and saw where the cereal was, but had Daddy reach up to the high shelf. Then he waited in the express lane, put his box and his coupon on the counter, and paid with his dollar. He was especially happy to get his own receipt.
So, what happens when you take a Handspring that died one day and wouldn't recover after various testing, and leave it in a box to take apart one day to see if it was anything obvious, but mostly forget about it for a year, and then pick it up and put batteries in it? It starts working, of course. I had tried every trick I knew about, hard resetting, leaving the batteries out for a week, taking out the expansion card, etc. without any luck.
So, I don't know what happened, nor how stable it currently is, but we had only made a backup to the local memory disk, and not to our hard drive, so we can at least get stuff off of it now.
I won't make this too detailed since Jon especially doesn't like this kind of stuff posted for everyone to read (and well, would you want your business customers - or worse, potential customers - reading about what your children are doing on the toilet?)
But I just wanted it on the record that when we unpacked the closets on 5/5 after Sanda's move, we found the little potty and Noah was immediately interested. He has been successful several times in the last week and very happy with himself, too. He usually uses the toilet sign to indicate his need.