Don't worry 'bout your branches

Here's what Daniel sang all around the house today, "Oh Christmas tree, o Christmas tree, don't worry 'bout your branches."

Daniel talking to himself

Daniel was talking to himself, holding a letter from his Rita, making up a new letter. "Dear Mama, thank you for going on your date so you can play with me and may with me. Talk you later, Daniel."

Sunday 2 am- how many pounds I weigh

I think Daniel may be going through a growth spurt. He is eating a huge amount at meals, and then also having several snacks. Sunday morning he woke up at 2am and said, Eat! Eat please!" He wanted pretzels, so we sat in his bedroom floor and had pretzels and water. While he was eating, he laid over on the floor. I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "Just thinking about how many pounds I weigh. Daniel just growing and growing!"

Hello Kitty

My parents gave me a kids' Hello Kitty birthday card with nail stickers. Daniel was playing with it tonight and decorating a little pumpkin with the stickers. As he played, he decided Hello Kitty had come to our house to play with him. She stayed with us through bath time, pajamas, and going to sleep. He taught her how to do our routine.

When it was time to get in the bathtub, I said, "Tell her you have to wait on the mat for a minute for the water to get warm." (he told her). Then I said, "Okay, let her know it's safe to get in the bathtub." He responded, "She not getting in yet. She have to take off her bow so it not get wet."

Mullanoyah

This may seem a little hard to follow, but here is one of today's conversations. We were playing in the backyard. Daniel had some pieces of bark that he was pretending were helicopters. He was putting them into a flower pot tray that had some rain water in it.

D:Here my helicopters. Floating away like a midsummer night.
B: What? Could you say that again, please?
D: My helicopters. There they floating away like a midsummer night.
B: That is an interesting thing to say. What story is that from?
D: Mullanoyah.
B: Oh, Mullanoyah. What is that story about?
D: Mullanoyah not a story. She the one who wrote it.
B: Oh, Mullanoyah is the author?
D:Yeah.
B: Did she write any other stories we know?
D: No, she in the office.
B: Oh, okay.

Later, when we were reading The Extraordinary Egg for probably the 50th time, I noticed one sentence that said something like, "and a full moon like a midsummer night." The story is by Leo Leonni. One of the characters is Marilyn. So, I said,-

B: Oh, there is "midsummer night." Is Leo Leonni 'mullanoyah?'
D: No.
B: Is Marilyn 'Mullanoyah?'
D: (hesitating and smiling at me really big) nooooo?
B: Okay. Well, I really like this story.

I am curious if Mullanoyah will return. :)

Interesting Solution

My mom gave Daniel a cloth Advent calendar in the shape of a Christmas tree, with numbered pockets for the days (1-24) of December. I told him it was an Advent calendar, to count the number of days until we celebrate Jesus' birthday. I said it has the days of December on it. He's been playing with it, and we've been reading the numbers to him. He's had it for three days or so.

Tonight in the family room after dinner, my mom asked what day of the week Christmas was on. She thought it was Saturday. She asked Joseph if he could look on his phone and tell her. He said yes. Daniel popped up and said, "I'll go get my Christmas tree, then I can tell you." I told him that was a really great idea. His Christmas tree does have the days of Christmas on it, but it doesn't have the days of the week.

Oh!

Twice a year we have Wednesday night church with a sister congregation in Chapel Hill. For this event, there is no nursery childcare. In the middle of the offertory (quiet piano music), Daniel says (in a normal voice) "Oh! I forgot to tell Mr. Craig I was a pink pirate for Halloween!"

Mama's birthday

I asked Daniel how he wanted to celebrate my birthday. Here is his response-
D: Go to Chick-fil-a!!! They have b-i-i-i-g-g-g (showing with his hands) playground. Dan want to sit close to playground (in) case I need to play. If I need to pee-pee.....they have bathroom! It goooood place.

A few weeks ago, he randomly told me he would buy me a Spiderman cake for my birthday.

Emmies

Daniel's favorite candy is emmies (M&M's). I'm not even sure how he knows what they are, but he LOVES them. When he found out that you get candy at Halloween, his first question was, "You might get emmies?"
Even a small amount of candy really influences him, making him super-excited and easily upset, sometimes for a long time. I have found that if I get candy without food coloring and high fructose corn syrup, we usually (not always) have a better time. Also, if he eats it in the morning, that works better than other times of day. We have developed a rule that we do not eat sugary foods at night. But, we can have them after we eat some normal breakfast. He is actually pretty understanding about this. If we have cake at church on Wednesday night, he gets to bring some home and have it after breakfast on Thursday. Since we started talking about Halloween, we reminded him that our family will eat our candy in the mornings.
So, I found some "natural emmies" called Sunspire. We tried them this morning, and they were a hit! I think he actually liked them better because they had lots of pink emmies. It was hard for him when his little bag of emmies was empty, but he created a solution- he decided to pretend that o's cereal were emmies. He did it three different times today. It was funny. He'd hold one up and say, "this emmie blue!" or sometimes "this 'tend emmie pink!"