Monthly review: November 2016

Posted: - Modified: | monthly, review

A- has gotten so much better at controlling her hands: gently patting the cat, grasping food with her thumb and index finger, taking things out of containers and putting them back in… She laid claim to one of the sets of Duplo that we were going to give to her cousins, and had lots of fun exploring the different shapes. She's been gradually shifting to using her fingers instead of her mouth, although the occasional thing still gets tasted, of course.

A- has also been working on her gross motor skills, getting the hang of creeping around everywhere on her hands and knees (so much more efficient than crawling on her tummy!), and even pulling herself up to stand with our help. She's more expressively vocal now, babbling with different intonations based on her mood. She likes staying close to me or to W-, but she's happy to spend time with other people once she has warmed up to them. She met the rest of my family on our trip to the Philippines – yay! She tried out many new foods, and seems to be a fan of sour tastes and chunkier textures. She's an awesome 9-month-old!

A-‘s cardiologist said that the hole in her heart continues to get better, but they still need to monitor the muscle bundle developing in her right ventricle to see if they need to operate on it. We'll follow up with another exam in February.

A-‘s head was getting too big for her old prosthetic eye, which kept popping out. Eventually it popped out in a crowded place where we couldn't find it even after searching multiple times. Oh well, we knew something like that would happen eventually – that's why we'd set aside an oops fund! We'll try replacing it with a less-expensive clear conformer first, and we'll wait until she's eligible for funding for another painted prosthetic eye.

As for us, the first half of the month was about preparing for the trip, and the second half was about enjoying it. The trip worked out beautifully – like a staycation, but with family and friends I hadn't seen in years. We cooked, ate, hung out, and took care of things – some bank-related stuff, and my parents' Canadian visa application too. There's more paperwork to be done, of course, but at least we got started.

I managed to squeeze in a bit of coding: turning over the add-on I'd been working on, and doing some data scraping for a friend. Didn't get much writing or coding done while we were away, of course, but that's all cool.

Life is good.

Blog posts

Sketches

Time

Time tracking slightly messed up by trip. Personal time way down, travel/family time way up, as expected. Sleep surprisingly the same – actually, slight increase, because I didn't track sleep well during the flight. Hmm…

Category Last month % This month % Diff h/wk Diff h/wk
Unpaid work 42.8 47.6 4.8 77.4 8.0
Discretionary – Family 1.9 6.3 4.4 10.2 7.4
Unpaid work – Childcare 35.1 37.0 1.8 60.2 3.1
Discretionary – Play 0.8 1.7 0.9 2.7 1.5
Business – Connect 0.0 0.4 0.3 0.6 0.5
Business – Build 0.1 0.2 0.0 0.3 0.1
Sleep 31.9 32.0 0.0 52.0 0.0
Discretionary – Productive 3.1 2.8 -0.4 4.5 -0.6
Business – Earn 2.8 0.6 -2.2 1.0 -3.6
Discretionary – Social 3.4 0.3 -3.2 0.5 -5.3
Personal 13.1 8.3 -4.7 13.6 -7.9
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