Embedded Files
Merry Christmas. We're not going to be able to send Christmas cards this year, so here is our Christmas email.
I finished my Master's in August and started work here in Ohio in October, doing image processing research for the Air Force. Tomorrow we head back to Long Island for Lesli's skull surgery. She'll be in North Shore University Hospital from the 13th through the 19th.
Lesli has collected a list of interesting or amusing things Daniel has said during the past year, plus a few that she or I said. At the beginning of the year he was just beginning to form sentences, but now he is very fluent, so there is some discrepancy depending on when the incident happened. They're attached below. Daniel turned 4 in October.
Stories from the past year:
Daniel hid his head under the pillow, then he lifted it up again and said, "I found me."
Doug said, "That's great Daniel. You’ve found yourself and you're only 3 years old."
Daniel wanted me to draw him a truck, but was leaning on my left arm while I was trying to draw it so I couldn’t draw. I said, “Get off my arm Daniel. I’m left-handed. Do you know what that means?”
Daniel—“Uh—I hit you!?”
Lesli- “No, it means I write with my left hand.”
Doug – “But that was a good guess.”
Doug asked Daniel what he wants for Christmas and Daniel said, "Presents!"
Daniel wiped his nose on his sleeve and I asked if he needed some toilet paper. He said, “No, I have my sleeve.”
Daniel made up a fun story:
Goldilocks and the three bears got on a red train.
The train went past a big tower. The train got out of the way.
They went to the chiropractor.
Baby bear played with the chiropractor's toys.
Baby bear chair was broken out to pieces.
The end.
Daniel saw a picture of a glowing USB powered snowman sitting next to a laptop and said, “The snowman is checking his homework like you, Poppy.’
Daniel watched me open ‘Spider Solitaire’ on the ward computer. Then today, he managed to open the start menu, look through 250 folders on our home computer to find the spider card icon, and click on it to play the game.
Daniel on the computer “I just need to play this game—for 2 hours. Okay?”
Daniel – ‘And I growing. And I get tall like the flowers.’
Doug – “Daniel, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Do you want to be a pilot, or a fireman, or a racecar driver?”
Daniel – “No, I just want to be little.”
Daniel was reading words with pictures (he does it by the pictures mostly) from his word book and pointing to each word as he said it: “Bag. Cheese. Orange. Bread. Money. We don’t have any money! Eggs. Carrot. Bottle. Tomato.” (We don’t know where he got that from. Sometimes he picks up on some surprising things.)
I made cookies. When the timer rang Daniel called, "Dinner's ready. I think it's cookies."
Talking about the fishpond—
Doug – “Where are the goldfish? I can’t find them.”
Daniel – “Oh, Mommy’s orange fishies are playing hide and seek?”
Lesli - “I think I’m going to take a nap.”
Daniel – “You tired too, Mommy? You tired three?”
Lesli – “You made a good joke, Daniel.”
Daniel – “Yes. I made a good joke.”
next day:
Lesli – ‘I was just looking at the flowers.”
Daniel – ‘I’m going to look at the flowers too, Mommy. You going to look at the flowers three. That’s a funny joke.’
Daniel – “ABCDEFG, Now I know my ABCs”
Douglas – “What happened to H and the other letters?”
Daniel – “They going to pick some flowers. I throw them and they going to pick some flowers and they coming back now.”
Lesli – “You’re a cutie.”
Daniel – “Oh yes, I cute. And I a goofball, too.”
Doug was putting the silverware away. Daniel said, “Poppy’s making music with that cleaning the dishes.”
Lesli – ‘Daniel, do you want a beating?’
Daniel – ‘Yes.’ Pause. ‘What is a beating?’
Daniel, after saying a blessing on the food – “Jesus is not outside coming to get everybody.”
Lesli – “Jesus lives in heaven.”
Daniel – “No Jesus is at church and helps everybody. He looks like Poppy. But his hair is different than Poppy’s. Mommy, Jesus has hair like you, Zackly same, like you. See, Mommy?”
Daniel – ‘I titered [tired]. I need a pocsle [popsicle] to make me happy.’
Lesli – “Don’t you cry. Momma’s going to give you a cherry pie. I bet you’d like a cherry pie.”
Daniel – “No, babies don’t like cherry pie. Babies like popsicles and juice boxes and going potty to get easter eggs.”
Douglas –“I wonder if this Stegosaurus under the covers makes any noise?”
Muffled voice from under covers – “It don’t make any noise. It be’s quiet.”
When Doug asked Daniel what he saw at the zoo, Daniel said, “A monkey.” And then he said, “And cow poop.” I think his cousins must have pointed out the cow poop.
Later, Daniel, drawing a cow, “And her tail, and her eyes, and her mouth, and some poop. That’s the poop and this is the cow.”
Daniel was wrapped around with two towels. He took them off and said, “I unwrap me like a present.”
Daniel wanted to do something I didn’t want him to do, so he said, “Mommy, go in the bedroom and close the door and take a nappy.”
Daniel coughed and it wasn’t all bubbly anymore, and he said, “I don’t have that yucky brown medicine cough anymore.” (He was talking about expectorant.)
Daniel had spread playdoh all over the floor. When I saw it I said, ‘For crying out loud,’ as I started to clean it up. Daniel said, ‘No, I not crying out loud. I is happy.’
Daniel says that when we grow up Doug will be a tow truck driver, I will be a doctor, and he will be a fireman driver.
Lesli – “Guess who is cute?” I pointed at Daniel and said, “You.”
Daniel pointed at me and said, “You. You too is cute.”
The speaker in sacrament meeting was recounting the story of when Brigham Young cancelled General Conference to send people to rescue the Martin and Willie handcart companies. Doug wrote a note to me on the program, “This story is always very remarkable to good LDS because they cancelled a meeting.”
Lesli – “You ate a lot of lunch didn’t you? You’re very full aren’t you?”
Daniel – “Yes, my bum is full of food.”
Lesli – “That’s very funny. What you say is, ‘My tummy is full of food.’”
Daniel – “Oh. My tummy is full. And my bum is full.”
The other night, Doug was suggesting that we sing songs, and Daniel said, "Let's sing, 'Jesus got for me a nice surprise.'"
Lesli- “Daniel, can you draw Poppy, with his glasses and everything?”
Daniel- “No, Poppy is too tricky to draw.”
Daniel made up a joke:
Q: What's the opposite of a transformer?
Ans: Opposite Prime!
(Optimus Prime is his favorite transformer)
Lesli, on finding a spill of yogurt on the bedroom carpet: “You’re not allowed to eat yogurt in the bedroom!”
Daniel – “That wasn’t me eating. That was me dancing.”
Doug – “That’s a good point.”
Daniel – “What’s a point?”
Doug – “A point is when you say something true that everyone has to agree with. And when you get lots of points you have a higher score. And when you get 100 points you win, and you don’t have to have any more conversations.”
Daniel to Doug – ‘Get me, get me!’ [Pause.] ‘Be happy ‘bout it, ‘kay?’
Daniel, trying to get Doug to be more enthusiastic about playing with him.
Lesli – “He was an idiot savant. If you told him ‘Tuesday, June 7, 1942,’ he could tell you what day of the week that was.”
Doug – “Hmmm. I think I could do that.”
Lesli – “How?!”
Daniel threw up. He was trying to tell us what happened and he said, “My mouth just spit up by hisself.” It’s very interesting what he comes up with to say things he doesn’t know how to say.
Daniel – “Mommy, I want you to ask me what drink I want and me say no and cry and you will give me a starburst to feel me better. I want to do that, ‘kay?”
Daniel just said his prayers after I read him Richard Scary’s “A Day at the Airport.” He said:
“Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the control tower. Thank you for the sidewalk. Thank you for—What’s this?” (pointing at the picture in the book)
Doug – “Parking Garage.”
“Thank you for the parking garage. Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.”
Daniel was asking me to do something for him on the Transformers webpage.
Daniel – ‘I want the blue kick.’
Lesli – ‘Daniel, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what that means.’
Daniel – ‘Me either.’
Daniel – ‘What’s the opposite of a word?’
Doug – ‘Silence.’
Daniel – ‘What’s the opposite of a rocket? The opposite of a rocket is taking spiders outside.
Doug – ‘Why is taking spiders outside the opposite of a rocket?’
Daniel – ‘Because Mommy don’t like spiders in the house.’
Doug – ‘Oh. Of course.’
Doug, while watching Daniel’s children’s show Bob the Builder—“If you were going to make artificially intelligent construction machines, why would you give them the personality of children?”
Daniel was lightly hitting me with his toy hammer and I told him to stop. He said, ‘No, I just fixing you.’
Daniel talking about letting the water out of his wading pool.
Daniel – ‘Mommy, I want to let the water out.’
Lesli – ‘Why?’
Daniel – ‘Because they says they want to be out.’
Daniel – ‘I don’t like dogs. Dogs are friendly. I like cats, ‘cause cats are not friendly.’
Daniel was drawing me a picture. Then he decided to write a word on it. Douglas and I were doing our own thing and paying no attention to him. He wrote "danm" and then showed it to Doug. Doug asked cautiously, "What does that spell?" Daniel said, "Dam. You say it when you knock something."
This is the first word he's figured out how to spell on his own.
Daniel- "Why are you putting those away?"
Doug "I'm just cleaning up."
Daniel- "Who's coming over?"
Doug- "No one."
Daniel- "Then why you cleaning up?"
Doug – “So the house can be clean.”
Lesli – ‘Doug, I need some break time from Daniel today.’
Daniel – ‘What you say Mommy?’
Lesli – ‘I said I need some break time from Daniel.’
Daniel – ‘Oh, I not taking a break.’
Doug – ‘Nope. You just keep going and going.’
Lesli – ‘Try not to drop the ice cream on the floor.’
Daniel – ‘I didn’t drop it. I spilled it.’
During general conference, Daniel said, “I don’t listen to you when I do bad things.’
Doug – ‘Carrots make you strong. I ate 200 carrots today. How many did you eat?’
Daniel – ‘One.’
Doug – ‘So who’s stronger?’ Daniel pointed at Doug.
Doug – ‘So you should eat carrots so you grow strong like your Poppy. Do you want some more carrots?’
Daniel – ‘Yes! I want to grow up. I want to grow up. Give me some carrots.’
He ate another baby carrot, then said, ‘And I ate two carrots and I got almost to your bellybutton.’
Daniel was playing with the calculator and he said ‘One plus two is three.’ I said, ‘You’re right—I didn’t know you could do that.’ He said, ‘No the calculator showed me.’
We were discussing the fact that we are out of Reese’s Puffs cereal. Daniel said, ‘Mom I don’t like Poppy to eat my treats. But I like him to eat yucky stuff that I don’t like.’
(discussing a rainforest puzzle with lots of animals on it)
Doug’s Mom – ‘Should we put the puzzle away first?’
Daniel – ‘No. Let’s leave it out so the animals can watch us.’
Lesli – ‘Do you think you got your blue eyes from me?’
Daniel – ‘No. They don’t come off.’
“I’m feeling the futility of all human endeavor in the face of entropy.” Doug, as he tries to make the bed while Daniel plays fort with the covers.
Daniel almost fell off the bed and said, ‘Why does the bed have those cliffs?’
Daniel said, ‘Hear that noise?’
Lesli – ‘What noise?’
Daniel – ‘Listen. Listen to my ear,’ and he leaned his ear towards my ear so that I could hear what he was hearing.
Lesli – ‘See, this is what the inside of the piano looks like. This is how the piano works.’
Daniel – ‘Oh. It’s batteries?’
Daniel – ‘Mom, some girls have socks that come up to here,’ and he held his hand up to his chest. (I’m pretty sure he means tights.)
Yesterday we were trying to get Daniel to eat his dinosaur chicken nugget for dinner. It was a stegosaurus. We were saying he could eat it's tale first, or head, or legs, or bumps. But Daniel wouldn't eat it. He was closing his mouth really tight. Rosemary said, "I don't see any lips."
Daniel said, "Well, it's just a chicken nugget."
I try not to let Daniel go to the Transformers website or watch Transformer cartoons because I think they’re too violent for a 3 and 4 yr old. Yesterday I had stopped him from watching one, put the internet on Nick Jr., and wouldn’t tell him how to spell Transformer. Today I came in and he was watching the Transformers movie preview in French. I asked him how he got there and he hit back and showed me a google search with tons of Transformer sites. He’d been trying them all out. We’d given him a small Transformer today and he looked on it’s packaging and copied it to type Transformers into Google search and was jogging through the results.
Lesli – ‘Only one person on the chair at a time. Daniel doesn’t count because he’s little.’
Daniel – ‘Yes I can count. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.’
Doug – ‘Yes. You’re right. Daniel does count.’
Daniel said, ‘When you are little and I am big, you can play with my toys.’
Doug – ‘Oh, am I going to get little again?’
Daniel – ‘Yes. If you eat lots of carrots.’
(Doug's Dad took this photo in December)
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