Weekly review: Week ending February 3, 2017

Posted: - Modified: | review, weekly

Another week of big leaps. A- can crawl up the stairs, so we should probably look into getting baby gates soon. About half the time, she'll indicate when she wants to nurse by squeezing her fist or curling her fingers. (The rest of the time, she just goes and helps herself.) The horse and the harness are definitely her favourite Duplo pieces. She picks them up whenever she plays in the living room. If they're apart, she'll look for both pieces and hand them to me so I can reassemble them.

The biggest thing I'm happy about, though, is that A- will let me reinsert her ocular prosthesis by myself, without any fussing or crying. This had previously been a two-person operation – I'd restrain her while W- put the conformer in, usually over her tears. Sometimes it took us several tries, since she'd turn her head, wriggle, and buck. W- started rewarding her with upside-down swinging, which is something she enjoys a lot. She eventually let us pop it back in quickly (promptly followed by a swing, of course). This week, he tried putting the conformer in by himself. He managed it, so I tried it as well, and I managed it too! That means that even when W- goes back to work, if A-'s conformer pops out, we won't have to wait for him to get back home. I can just clean it and put it back in by myself. Level up!

The nurse from the Healthy Babies Healthy Children came for another play evaluation. A- wasn't interested in stacking blocks, though. Ah well! We'll try evaluating feeding next. We also talked about developmental screening. I read some research on microphthalmia that said one in five people with it have learning difficulties, and that even if there don't appear to be related symptoms in the first year, additional things often come up when the child is three or four years old. It turns out many children don't get routinely seen by medical professionals outside the usual vaccination schedule, so a lot of developmental delays are caught only when school starts. Since I have limited experience with children, I'll need to keep on top of what's considered normal and what might be a cause for concern. The Nipissing developmental screens go up to 6 years old, so that helps. We'll stick with the Healthy Babies Healthy Children program as long as they'll have us. It's so nice having that regular check-in with a nurse who can monitor A-'s development, and the family home visitor suggests lots of great activities too. The Junction Family Resource Centre and the Ontario Early Years Centre also have people I can ask, and the parent advocacy workshop I just registered for will probably be quite helpful.

We took A- to the JFRC this week. She mostly stayed close to me, although she was a little interested in the bin of musical instruments. She's a bit keen to snatch things out of younger babies' hands, so I redirect her with other fun things to explore instead.

We've been making an effort to incorporate more vegetables into our meals, and that's starting to feel more natural now. Vegetable-heavy pizza, roasted vegetables, yum yum. A-'s been eating pretty lightly, but that's okay. As long as we keep modeling good eating and putting healthy choices in front of her, she'll be fine. She likes feeding us whatever's left on her saucer, and we don't mind eating the extra veg and meat. We tried the pouch food we bought for emergencies, and we're definitely not keen on it. Home-made food as much as possible – just have to keep exploring new recipes!

A-'s bottom teeth are definitely out now, and her top incisors are beginning to emerge. Her sleep has been more messed up than usual – evening naps, late-night bedtimes – but we can adapt to that. I might try waking up with an alarm as a way of nudging her to keep a consistent bedtime instead of letting it get later and later, though. Anyway, this is temporary. I'll get more time for thinking and writing later.

I still managed to do a bit of consulting – a small NodeJS server that parsed and displayed some content from a different system. I should probably follow up on that this week.

W- has been working on a jig for making mortises and tenons. He's planning to replace the coffee table in the living room with one that's a bit wider and with rounded edges. It's more work baby-proofing than the usual "stick corners on the thing and call it a day", but it builds skills, so I'm all for it. He's getting a lot of good use out of the basement workshop he put together during parental leave, yay! Only a few weeks left before he goes back to work. It's good to do what he can now so that woodworking can be an enjoyable hobby even in small chunks during regular weeks.

My discretionary time is all about the small chunks, too. Someday I'll have bigger chunks to play with again, but in the meantime, this is cool.

Blog posts

Sketches

Focus areas and time review

  • Business (2.7h – 1%)
    • Earn (2.4h – 90% of Business)
    • Build (0.2h – 9% of Business)
      • ☑ Prepare invoice
      • ☑ Check out SimpleTax
    • Connect (0.0h – 0% of Business)
  • Relationships (0.0h – 0%)
    • ☑ Check RESP ledger
  • Discretionary – Productive (2.8h – 1%)
    • Drawing (1.9h)
    • Emacs (0.6h)
    • Coding (0.2h)
  • Discretionary – Play (2.1h – 1%)
  • Personal routines (11.7h – 6%)
  • Unpaid work (80.9h – 48%)
    • Childcare (73.2h – 43% of total)
  • Sleep (67.7h – 40% – average of 9.7 per day)

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