Big week for medical things. A- needed to be sedated for a heart exam, which meant no solids past midnight and no nursing four hours before the exam. We had a relaxed evening of eating her favourite foods, and she ate almost until the cut-off time (last cracker at 11:57 PM). She woke up as soon as she wasn’t allowed to nurse, and cried for a while until W- and I managed to distract her with songs and attention. It was still tough going at the sedation clinic, but she settled down twenty minutes after the chloral hydrate was given (and, possibly coincidentally, once I started on “How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight”). The cardiologist said she looks okay so far, so we might be able to stay with A-‘s regular cardiologist for routine monitoring instead of coming to Sick Kids.
A-‘s eye exam on Friday involved pupil dilation. She was too upset for the pediatric ophthalmologist-in-training to do the exam, but the main ophthalmologist suggested waiting until A- was asleep, so that’s when he had a look. So far, so good. Yay!
Creating positive associations has helped a lot. We’ve taken to decompressing at the family centre in Sick Kids, playing one of their ukuleles and reading books. I brought her stuffed toy sheep, which has become her favourite comfort object. Liberal use of upside-down time has also gotten her to let me clean her teeth, which is a relief.
It’s fun watching A- become more independent. A- started doing the actions for “Slice, Slice” and “Sleeping Bunnies”. She insisted that we mime the slicing and spreading on our own bodies, which is cool. “Sleeping Bunnies” now often elicits a “No” at just the right spot. She’s carried that over to saying “No” in various situations, including refusing my help and asking for W-‘s. Whee! Our kiddo’s becoming more opinionated, and she’s developing the tools to express what she wants. That should help minimize her frustration. She won’t be able to get everything she wants, of course, but at least she can differentiate between things she’ll get after waiting and things to which I have to say no. (Especially since she managed to disable the microwave child lock before…) She has free rein of the notebooks and pens I keep stashed around the house, which she has started fishing out of drawers and doodling in. Maybe we’ll get her sketchnoting someday!
It was great catching up with a friend and her kiddo at the ROM. I also spent some time reflecting on impact, following up on a conversation with a few other friends last week. A- had fun during a video chat with Lolo. She pointed at body parts when prompted, and walked around a bit too.
The VPN token I use to access my consulting clients’ network expired, so I’ve been focusing on personal projects while waiting for a replacement. I added category and tag exclusion to my WordPress theme. That lets me make a bulk view of my non-Emacs-News posts so that I can reread them during my annual review. I started working on multiple timeline support for Quantified Awesome so that I can move baby data tracking there, but progress is slow. I finally downscaled my Linode plan, too, accepting that I probably won’t have the mental bandwidth to make the most of its capacity until A- is in school or something like that.
We’ve been shifting towards more vegetable-based proteins because of the draft recommendations for Canada’s food guide and for other health reasons. I stocked up on dried spices and herbs for Mason jar soups, since they’re easy to prepare even when hanging out with A-. The Moroccan lentil soup was a good first try; next time, I’ll grind the spices. A- liked the lentils but not the wild rice in this curried lentil wild rice soup, but we’ll give that a few more tries. too. I feel pretty good about the change in our eating habits. I’ll need to read up more on nutrition to make sure we’ve got all the important nutrients. We still eat meat, just less than before. I might be developing mild lactose intolerance, too, so that’s something else to consider.
W- spent the weekend pouring concrete piers for the porch with the help of a couple of neighbours. It was a lot of work even with the electric mixer. Recovering from that and a sore throat took a while, but fortunately, we can take things pretty easy.
Next week: one more Sick Kids appointment, and then catching up!
Blog posts
Sketches
Focus areas and time review
- Business (1.9h – 1%)
- Earn (0.3h – 16% of Business)
- ☐ Earn: E1: 1-2 hours of consulting
- Build (1.6h – 83% of Business)
- ☑ Consider fiddling with Linode payment
- ☑ Transfer credit from Paypal to Linode
- Connect (0.0h – 0% of Business)
- Relationships (6.5h – 3%)
- Discretionary – Productive (7.7h – 4%)
- Drawing (5.1h)
- Emacs (0.9h)
- Coding (1.4h)
- ☑ Tweak my WordPress theme to allow category exclusion
- Writing (0.4h)
- Discretionary – Play (0.7h – 0%)
- Personal routines (13.5h – 8%)
- Unpaid work (9.9h – 5%)
- A- (Childcare) (72.2h – 42% of total)
- Sleep (55.5h – 33% – average of 7.9 per day)
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