This article describes a multi-sited ethnographic study of a Turkish child, Fatih, and his mother, Elif, over a period of three years. The study was a longitudinal ethnographic project that focused on children's multimodal texts in the home. Additional research was also carried out in the classroom. This article describes the researcher's developing understanding of the meanings of Fatih's texts, and considers how the use of time scales in ethnographic work can aid understandings of texts. (Contains 1 figure.)