Monthly review: December 2016

Posted: - Modified: | monthly, review

After enjoying lots of time with old friends and family, we flew back to Toronto and settled into our household routines. The flights back were a bit more comfortable, thanks to the timing and the rest areas at the Manila and Incheon airports. It took A- and I a few weeks to get over jet lag, since I mostly went by her cues. Short days and cold weather made it harder to reset her circadian rhythm, but we eventually synced up with W-. We even got back into the habit of walking again, once we were mostly lined up with daylight.

One of the unexpected benefits of going on this trip was the realization that congee and bibimbap can be part of our everyday routines, thanks to inexpensive and easily-cooked ingredients. I just need to marinate ground beef or pork in soy sauce, brown it, and keep it in the fridge, and gradually build up a supply of banchan when there’s time. Yum yum yum. W- picked up a container of gochujang, and we’ve been making good progress through it too.

Since we lost A-‘s painted shell, I took A- to be fitted for a clear conformer. This one kept popping out, though – sometimes twice a day, sometimes even when she wasn’t touching it. Eventually we lost it somewhere in the house, which was very mystifying. I’ll be taking her for another one in January. I hope this one fits better, or else I might have to tweak the budget a bit.

On the plus side, A- has gotten the hang of clapping. It’s awesome. She claps for herself, she claps for us, she claps when she wakes up and it’s another nice day… :) She’s also gotten a lot of practice in putting things on top of other things/cats/parents. She likes putting things into and taking things out of baskets, which makes laundry time more interesting. She’s getting more confident about crawling even around the corner and out of sight, and she’s often keen to walk with our help.

W- created a play area in the living room, and we’ve been spending a lot of time in it. New lights and more floor space really changed the feel of the room. We also put up elephant stickers in A-‘s room, which feels a lot more like a nursery now. (W- oiled the hinges, too, so it’s easier to go in and out without worrying about waking her up.)

A- continues to follow the 15th percentile curve in terms of weight. She got the second half of the flu shot, so she’ll probably be okay this season.

We went to Brantford for W-‘s family’s Christmas thing. A- was okay with the long car ride, although we needed to make one stop on the way there so that she could nurse. That was the day we lost her clear conformer, too, so we were a little frazzled. She mostly stayed close to us, although she warmed up enough to explore the gifts and hang out with family.

I did a little bit of consulting, mostly just maintenance. I also did some coding and troubleshooting for my blog. It was a little embarrassing to not have noticed the broken paragraphs for so long, but oh well!

Lots of writing on my phone – the new workflow with Google Tasks seems to be working out well. We’ll see how next month goes!

Blog posts

Sketches

Category Nov Dec Diff h/wk Diff h/wk
Sleep 32.0 35.3 3.4 61.2 5.6
Discretionary – Play 1.7 2.6 0.9 4.4 1.5
Business – Build 0.2 0.7 0.5 1.2 0.8
Discretionary – Productive 2.8 3.1 0.3 5.3 0.5
Discretionary – Social 0.3 0.2 -0.1 0.3 -0.2
Business – Connect 0.4 0.2 -0.2 0.3 -0.3
Personal 8.3 8.1 -0.3 14.0 -0.4
Business – Earn 0.6 0.3 -0.3 0.6 -0.5
Unpaid work – Childcare 37.0 36.3 -0.6 63.0 -1.1
Unpaid work 47.6 43.7 -3.9 75.7 -6.5
Discretionary – Family 6.3 2.1 -4.1 3.7 -7.0
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