Category: Jonathan
Posted by Tricia at 11:03 pm
Several years back, Jay started cutting our boys’ hair at home in order to save some buckos.
He even cuts his own now, what a cool guy!
A year and a half ago, I featured Josiah’s first haircut with the flobee….remember this entry??
Eighteen months later, the poor boy has very little additional hair, but yesterday after Jay finished cuts on both Josiah and Jonathan it struck me that they look a lot alike with their twinkie haircuts…
Here they are post early-morning hair cuts:
Posted by Tricia at 10:01 am
In keeping with birthday tradition, Jonathan enjoyed the breakfast of his choice this morning. Here he is with his pancakes and bacon (and doing his best “Home Alone” face).
It was especially fun to have Uncle Andrew and Cousin Isaac here today for breakfast too! Happy eight years, Jonathan!!
Posted by Jay at 2:35 pm
Tricia posted a sweet entry about home schooling Jonathan recently. Here’s the picture she used of Jonathan.
Is it just me, or is there a striking resemblance to a slightly better known character from Christmas past?
Posted by Tricia at 12:36 pm
So….we are loving our Singapore math curriculum. To better prepare for our year, I spent the summer months working with the two older children on a review of third and first grade, respectively. If you have not used Singapore math from the beginning, jumping in midway, especially if you are wanting to begin “on level”, present challenges. It is an excellent math program, but it requires mental conception and thought that other curriculums, even highly rated ones, do not. Our school had suggested the summer work, and I am glad we did it; it has made the transition into this year much easier.
Mostly easy, I should say. When one is working with a little boy whose brain likes to skip ahead, there are some challenges, as I saw today. This morning, Jonathan and I began a unit on “Subtraction With Renaming”, that is, borrowing ten ones from the tens place to stick in the ones place, borrowing ten tens from the hundreds place to stick in the tens place, and so on. We looked at our first problem:
92 – 68 = ?
And before I could even say anything, my child did the subtraction in his head. Brilliant, but you still have to learn this renaming “thing”, Jonathan.
So, I began explaining the concept that since we cannot take 8 from 2, we must “borrow” ten ones from the 3 in the next place over. And Jonathan stops me once again, this time with an almost incredulous-sounding, “But Mom, you don’t need to rename the 2 at all!! Don’t you know: 2 minus 8 is negative 6?!?”
Posted by Tricia at 9:43 pm
Tonight after I’d tucked Jonathan and Nicolas into bed (they share a room) I went back in to quickly drop off a toy or something and came upon a most interesting scene.
The room was dark as it should be, but Jonathan was sitting up in bed talking; actually as I was soon to learn, he was telling a story, which his little brother (also sitting up in his bed) was listening to with rapt attention. Arranged in front of Jonathan were various Webkins and stuffed animals who normally occupy his bed and he was moving one of the stuffed things while having it say, “I am a Hebrew. And I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.”
This made me stop my hasty exit from the room long enough to ask what in the world he was talking about. Surely this was no ordinary “stuffed animal bedtime story”.
“Oh, he’s telling me the story of Jonah, Mom.” Nicolas offered. Telling the story indeed; it sounded to me like my son was narrating the account verbatim from the text which I knew he had read to himself just the day before while we sat in church during the sermon. Very intrigued by this point I grabbed the nearest Bible I could find and stealthily planted myself just outside the room to listen. Jonathan was only in the first chapter of the Book of Jonah, so I figured this could take a while, and I certainly didn’t want to miss it.
For the next several minutes I skimmed over the story while listening to my little boy go over each part of all four chapters in amazingly accurate detail. Ok, so he left out most of Jonah’s prayer from inside the belly of the fish, as well as the three verse decree to the people of Ninevah in the third chapter, but he did all of the first and fourth chapters in a verse by verse paraphrase, using much of the original Biblical language. Near the end of the book he did get mixed up, and knowing I was listening nearby called out, “Hey Mom – what is it again God said to Jonah there?”
I read verse 8 of the fourth chapter and he answered, “No, that’s not quite right. Are you reading from the New King James Version? You should be on page 624 in that Bible.”
At which point I almost dropped my teeth out of my mouth. He even knew the page number that verse was on. Oh how very,very freaky. But I calmly opened his red NKJV Bible and turned obediently to page 624 and read verse 8 again. This time with the proper wording apparently, because he thanked me and happily went on and finished his bedtime story for Nicolas.
Which begs the question: how many little boys have a seven year old brother who at bedtime will narrate an entire book of the Bible to them like that after reading it the day before in church? I am overwhelmingly astounded at this. I don’t even have a proper, tidy ending for this blog entry because I am just too astounded. All I can say is “Wow!”
Posted by Jay at 7:11 pm
Jonathan, almost crying: “Dad, I don’t want to play chess anymore. Nicolas won’t play easier.”
That’s Jonathan, the 7 year old intellectual prodigy, referring to Nicolas, the 5 year old boy who until recently tried hard to give the impression he had cotton fluff between his ears.
Editor’s note: see comments for title credits.
Posted by Tricia at 6:24 pm
“I’m sorry Mom, but I just cannot ABIDE refried beans!”
~courtesy of Jonathan
Posted by Tricia at 10:10 am
Posted by Jay at 1:13 pm
There have been a few twists and turns since my last post. Yesterday morning, it seemed like Jonathan was doing very well and would likely be headed home today. Then he spiked a high fever in the afternoon and those hopes dwindled. We had a rough night and then an early morning visit from vampires, er, I mean the nurse who draws blood for further lab work.
When the doctor came by a couple hours later, Jonathan was still struggling with fever and discouraged by the blood letting. Interestingly, the doctor reported that all lab reports were looking good and moving in the right direction. And this without any new doses of antibiotic (which they withheld to test the hypothesis that it was viral).
So, it appears Jonathan is afflicted with a mystery virus that piggy-backed the pneumonia from a couple weeks ago. Mono is one of the suspects. But whatever the culprit, there wasn’t much to do other than ride it out, so were given the okay to head home. There are a few more results that should be coming in on Monday, so we may yet discover the actual culprit, but it is good to be home.
Posted by Tricia at 11:56 pm
Children’s has a medium set up for patients to receive email messages from friends and loved ones. Anything you send will be hand-delivered to Jonathan. Click here if you’d like to send him a message directly. He is a great reader, and loves to get mail of any variety. Thanks, Everyone!
Posted by Jay at 3:17 pm
First, we appreciate everyone’s thoughts, prayers, offers of help, and other expressions of love that have poured in over the past couple days.
Jonathan and I arrived at Children’s Medical Center yesterday afternoon and were treated to the least tortuous, least degrading, easiest admittance process I have ever experienced (and I’ve experienced about 20 of them). Interestingly, the gentleman signing us in was apparently in training for Mr. Universe or something, and his biceps were probably bigger than my thighs. But I digress.
Jonathan was doing very well, particularly given he was running a 103 degree fever. Once we were settled in a room (and a nice room at that, think LDR), we had a nice long consultation with our hospitalist. She was pleasant and competent, traits shared with pretty much everyone at Children’s. She then ordered a battery of tests, and Jonathan made me proud as he kept his composure while they poked, prodded, measured, x-rayed, and bled him through the evening. Along the way he enjoyed a dinner of french toast and bacon, cried after spilling his hot chocolate (and not from the hot liquid all over himself, but because he was enjoying it), took in a view of Pete’s Dragon, and generally did very well. Tricia dropped by late in the evening for a nice visit that coincided with the administration of the antibiotic via the IV installed earlier, and then Jonathan settled in for some sleep. I settled in for “sleep”, as I was on this couch-bed thing that was roughly equal to a balance beam surrounded by some squishy couch material.
The night went reasonably well, though there were some rough patches as Jonathan broke his fever. This morning he had no fever, which was fantastic, but didn’t last. The hospitalist came by again, with the surprising report that the x-ray hadn’t really shown any pneumonia. So next up was a CAT scan and then a rousing game of Battleship, followed by the return of the fever and some lunch.
So we have test results drifting in, but no real resolution yet. The hospital stay has been very pleasant, but we would like to be home. And I suppose that’s a good thing.
Posted by Tricia at 3:20 pm
Last night saw very little sleep for most of us as Jonathan relapsed with high fever, and Josiah fought a very nasty tummy bug, which he continues to fight today.
This morning after seeing Jonathan our pediatrician made the decision to hospitalize him, because he did not like the direction the pneumonia was taking. Jonathan is now checked in, and they are running a series of tests to rule out anything worse, in order to determine proper course of treatment. He is under the care of a very competent and compassionate doctor, and we are thankful for the attentive care he will receive, though we miss him terribly at home.
For his part, Jonathan was quite nervous about the prospect of hospitalization, so prayers for his little heart to be calm, and for his little body to heal are all very appreciated.
We are thankful for our sweet Grammy, who has come to be of help. Her presence has cheered us, and the house is a fresher, cleaner, more delightful place to be since her arrival.
I will try to post updates here as we have them.
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