Weekly review: Week ending October 14, 2016

Posted: - Modified: | review, weekly

While playing with the stack of flannel wipes, A- accidentally discovered how to play peek-a-boo by holding up a piece of cloth. It turns out that baby arms are adorably stubby and just right for holding up cloth to baby faces. Huh. How about that? Naturally, we encouraged this cuteness with lots of enthusiasm. A- has also taken to offering us some of her food by holding it up in the general direction of our mouths, and looking at us. At least I think that's what she's doing, since she seems to wait for us to mouth whatever it is she's holding. Sometimes she does the same gesture without any food in her hand. I'm not quite sure what to make of that, but I smile at her anyway. She was very amused by gravity demonstrations. Dropping objects in front of her often elicited laughs, and she looked at both the starting positions and ending positions.

I've been doing pretty well with the reintegration of the ukulele into our daily routines. I had put it aside for a while because I was concerned about aggravating de Quervain's tenosynovitis, but the movements for chords and finger-picking don't seem to mess with that part of my wrist. Ukulele time is turning out to be quite multipurpose. It exposes her to music, motivates gross motor control as she crawls toward me, lets her experiment with fine motor control as she tries to strum the strings, and familiarizes her with nursery rhymes. For my part, it's a good exercise for concentration, memory, and dexterity. I've made a list of songs to study, which should help structure the time a bit better.

Her weight gain has slowed down a lot, although it's still within the normal range. 6.844 kg at 7 months (almost 8), so she's still under the 15th percentile curve. We haven't really changed anything about our feeding (aside from possibly having more social occasions away from our own kitchen table) and she's active and looks well-nourished, so this might just be her catch-up weight gain tapering off. I'll let the pediatrician know, and I'll take her for another weight check in two weeks.

Lots of social things this week. We checked out the High Park Nature Centre, which might be an interesting resource for nature education and group activities. I'm not sure A- will get much out of the programs at this stage, but maybe when she's toddling about curiously. We celebrated Thanksgiving and M-'s birthday with W-'s family. A- actually let a few people hold her, although she was still intimidated by W-'s parents. W- packed a pretty bento of tamagoyaki, broccoli, carrots, raspberries, and yogurt, which A- enjoyed in addition to whatever she could steal off my plate. Morgan and Cathy gave us books and tips. Yay! A couple of my friends were dealing with a family emergency, so I spent some time with them to help with their baby and sort out food. We got them pizza, and then we made chicken noodle soup. Home-cooked food is my sanity-restoring go-to.

A few of the parents at Friday's baby time session at the library told me about a Junction parents' meetup at a nearby bar, so I joined them for lunch. I also checked out the Toronto Association of Parent Educators' get-together on Tuesday at Wallace Emerson. It got me thinking about what I'm looking for in terms of socialization, and how I can go about cultivating those friendships. I like being able to see familiar faces at these parent-and-baby events. It makes conversations easier, and I pick up ideas and tips I might not have thought of looking for. I also like how Jen and Ewan and I can share resources and experiences. The landscape will probably change once we get to A-'s second year, since most parents will be back at work and A- will be ready for more activities. We'll see how things work out.

I made good progress on my consulting project, but I'm now stymied by something I can't fiddle with myself. I've asked the other technical folks for help, since I don't have the access or experience to do that part efficiently. In the meantime, I can work on front-end error handling, and then I can look around for other interesting things to work on.

Cold nights mean wrapping up our garden for the year, and baking season has definitely started. We've been trying out different socks and jackets for A-, and I plan to make her leg warmers too. We've been making steady progress through the box of vegetables I received as part of the nutrition workshop follow-up program. I made a plum tart and brought it to Thanksgiving dinner, baked one of the squashes, peeled and cut all the potatoes, boiled half of the beets, and munched my way through most of the apples. W- turned all the kale into a warm salad. There's still a little lettuce left, half of the beets, two tomatoes, and two cucumbers. We're doing much better at this random-box-of-vegetables thing than I did when I was in grad school or when we signed up for a community-supported agriculture program a few years ago. Yay experience!

2016-10-15a-week-ending-2016-10-14-weekly-journal output

Blog posts

Sketches

Focus areas and time review

  • Business (1.6h – 0%)
    • Earn (1.6h – 99% of Business)
    • Build (0.0h – 0% of Business)
    • Connect (0.0h – 0% of Business)
  • Relationships (17.6h – 10%)
    • ☑ Set up savings account for A-
    • ☑ Message Jen and Chris about blocks
  • Discretionary – Productive (4.6h – 2%)
    • Drawing (3.2h)
    • Emacs (0.7h)
    • Coding (0.0h)
    • Sewing (0.2h)
    • Writing (0.0h)
  • Discretionary – Play (2.3h – 1%)
  • Personal routines (21.1h – 12%)
  • Unpaid work (65.2h – 38%)
    • Childcare (55.2h – 32% of total)
  • Sleep (55.6h – 33% – average of 7.9 per day)

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