Weekly review: Week ending July 29, 2016

Posted: - Modified: | review, weekly

Good news from A-'s liver MRI: the weirdness was just capillaries, not liver cancer, whew. Her echocardiogram resulted in the same diagnosis the cardiologist gave us before, with no clear indications for or against surgery, so we'll just have to wait and see. Still, it's a relief to start closing some of those loops, downgrading things from ongoing concerns to less-frequent checks.

There's still the matter of A-'s slow weight gain, which has been upgraded to something the pediatrician is Very Concerned About. She's catching up well in terms of length, but not in terms of weight. She seems fine – active, happy, adorably jowled and jelly-rolled – but it's probably a good idea to err on the side of supplying her growing brain with extra nutrients. We're seeing a dietitian next week in order to work out a feeding plan. It's not covered by either the public health care system or W-'s insurance, but that's okay; it's a good investment. It's time to get that going, instead of waiting for publicly-funded resources which are probably focused on people who need it more. In the meantime, our pediatrician has recommended daily servings of meat and rice cereal, so we introduced those to A- this week.

I've started tracking feeding in more detail, too, because data and visualizations help me with those questions I never quite know how to answer concisely. "How's her nursing?" "As often as she wants, which is maybe… every two to three hours. Sometimes for five minutes, but often for thirty or forty minutes, or even longer." Might be better to show how our days are consistent in their inconsistency, bar-code-like graphs on a timeline. Also, since Sick Kids' wifi firewalls nonstandard ports, I finally got around to set up a reverse proxy for my tracker.

I didn't make it to the Peer Nutrition program on Monday because of A-'s cardiology appointment, but I was able to catch the same class in a different location on Wednesday. It was interesting to taste the difference between commercial baby food and homemade baby food, and it solidified our decision to cook A-'s meals whenever we could. Also, there were extra vegetables from the follow-up program, so I went home with the unexpected bounty of kale, lettuce, a zucchini, and a cucumber. Yum yum!

I reacquired Philippine citizenship and included A-, so now we're both dual citizens. We'll most likely stay in Canada, especially with A-'s health issues, but it might make some paperwork easier. Also, we visited W-'s mom for dinner. A- was fussy because she was tired, so I snuggled up with her while they chatted.

My second set of peas is starting to grow, and the basil in the planters seems to have sprung back even though we harvested large chunks of it for pesto. It's awesome.

2016-08-01a Week ending 2016-07-29 -- index card #journal #weekly output

Blog posts

Sketches

Focus areas and time review

  • Business (1.9h – 1%)
    • Earn (1.9h – 100% of Business)
    • Build (0.0h – 0% of Business)
    • Connect (0.0h – 0% of Business)
  • Relationships (10.9h – 6%)
    • ☑ Add medical summary for A-
    • ☑ Fill in paperwork for reclaiming Philippine citizenship
  • Discretionary – Productive (7.2h – 4%)
    • Drawing (4.5h)
    • Emacs (0.7h)
      • ☐ [#A] Do another Emacs News review
    • Coding (0.1h)
      • ☑ Make reverse proxy for tracker
      • ☑ Make special feeding chart
  • Discretionary – Play (0.0h – 0%)
  • Personal routines (14.0h – 8%)
  • Unpaid work (69.1h – 41%)
    • Childcare (58.9h – 35% of total)
  • Sleep (64.9h – 38% – average of 9.3 per day)

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