Weekly review: Week ending March 10, 2017

Posted: Mar 15, 2017 - Modified: May 29, 2019| review, weekly

Following up on last week's recommendation to go see a dentist for A-, I took A- to her first dentist appointment. It turns out that she has enamel hypoplasia, a developmental defect that results in incomplete enamel. It's associated with a higher risk of cavities, so we'll be extra careful about brushing her teeth and minimizing sweets. It may or may not affect her permanent teeth. We'll see. Anyway, it's just something to deal with.

The first session of the parent advocacy workshop was an overview of the 6-week series, definitions of advocacy, and group sharing. It got me thinking about what A- could learn from how I advocate for her. I don't know what kinds of accommodations we might need, but I hope to be able to take a collaborative approach to continuous improvement. I'd love it if A- absorbed the message "We're all different, and it's good to adapt our environment to reduce barriers and help us" rather than "I have to be treated specially because of my limits". I'm still going to tap all the resources I can, but that's because I like learning. :)

The Let's Get Started session focused on visual routines, and I posted a few notes on that and previous sessions. I've been making an effort to use more visual props when talking to A- or transitioning between activities: a diaper, the potty, her high chair, the sleep sack…

We've been working on pointing, too, as I realized we hadn't emphasized that and it's usually a 12-month milestone. She's starting to get the hang of it, gesturing towards things she's interested in and sometimes even sort of pointing with a finger.

A- practised crawling up and down the carpeted stairs to the second floor. She sometimes needs a reminder at the top of the staircase to go down legs-first, but is otherwise surprisingly capable. We decided to skip installing baby gates for now since I'm with her, and she seems to like having stair practice time. She works so hard!

We went to the Junction Family Resource Centre and the Parenting and Family Literacy Centre. A- is getting better at playing independently. I had a bit of time to chat with the facilitators and the other parents, and even to flip through the red flags guide by the City of Toronto.

A- figured out a new sound ("Nai") and seemed to recognize the words "crumple" and "cat".

I did a little consulting, too. I added a categorization feature, wrote a tutorial, and helped transfer some more of my code.

I replaced my credit card and reactivated my library card, so that's all sorted out now. I also updated my Ledger to correctly tally up my investments, explored tools for converting bank data, and created a net worth summary report. I needed the investment records in order to double-check the book value for my taxes, which I started preparing in a VM. I also set up incremental backups with borgbackup and a VM for testing my blog backups, yay!

It's great to have focused time for process improvement. Looking forward to more tweaking!

Blog posts

Sketches

Focus areas and time review

Business (1.0h – 0%)
- Earn (0.9h – 93% of Business)
- Build (0.1h – 6% of Business)
Relationships (1.5h – 0%)
Discretionary – Productive (11.4h – 6%)
- Drawing (1.5h)
- Emacs (0.8h)
  - ☑ [#A] Do another Emacs News review
  - ☐ [#A] Do another Emacs News review
- Coding (3.2h)
  - ☑ Set up WordPress inside a VM
- Tracking
  - ☑ Add prices
  - ☑ Report in nwi-style
  - ☑ Fix locked in RRSP
  - ☑ Try out Studiotax in a VM
  - ☑ Pivot my accounts for easier balance checking
  - ☑ Update TFSA
  - ☑ Fix GIC balance
  - ☑ Set up combined ledger
  - ☑ Update A-'s ledger
- Writing (0.3h)
Discretionary – Play (0.1h – 0%)
Personal routines (12.9h – 7%)
Unpaid work (87.4h – 52%)
- Childcare (76.2h – 45% of total)
Sleep (53.7h – 31% – average of 7.7 per day)

You can view 2 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

2 comments

Mylene Sereno

2017-04-01T20:12:51Z

Hi Sacha! It's been a while since I last visited your blog. I became a new mom myself and my baby will be 6 months old in April 4. Yay! I've been reading your posts and I'm so amazed that you're still able to write posts and sketch regularly. I really want to document my journey as a mom and my baby's growth but I'm really having a hard time finding time! Lol. I went back to work when she was 4 months old and I've been really busy with work, traveling to work everyday and taking care of her when I'm home.

sachac

2017-04-02T07:07:14Z

Yes, I see your Facebook posts occasionally! =) Congrats too!

I find it hard to remember what happened last week, much less last month. And with babies, so much happens in a week or even a day! I use my phone to jot down quick keywords in the moment. For example, here's a list of today's notes: filling box; this little piggy; lolo and lola; pat mart; hodo kwaja; looking into music; hippo belly button; feeding with spoon. Those notes are so short that they'll probably only make sense to me for a few days, so I try to keep up with drawing my journal at least every couple of days. That's when I might flesh out the notes so that I can remember:

- filling box: Ah, this is when A- picked up chickpeas one by one and put them into a small box that used to contain spices, and then she poured them all out. She's really working on her fine motor control!
- this little piggy: I've been doing the This Little Piggy rhyme on her toes, and she's starting to anticipate and enjoy the wee-wee-wee of the last line.
- lolo and lola: We chatted with Lolo and Lola over Facebook video chat today. She mostly hid behind my shoulder, but she smiled a little, and she also played with the laundry basket.
- pat mart, hodo kwaja: I took A- with me to the Asian supermarket and bought furikake, curry mix, and gochujang. We also got walnut cakes from the Hodo Kwaja bakery.
- looking into music: The Royal Conservatory of Music has an interesting toddler music program that I might sign up for. I want to dig into the research for early childhood education and music so that I can do stuff with A- at home.
- hippo belly button: A- pretended to let the Duplo hippo bite her nose, which amused us a lot. W- used the hippo to point out A-'s belly button too. Then A- took the hippo and used it to poke W-'s belly button. She learns quickly!
- feeding with spoon: A- insisted on feeding me most of my lunch with the regular-sized spoon I was using. It was heavier than her plastic spoon, and even heavier with all that congee on it, but she looked so proud of herself for doing it. =)

If I hadn't written those keywords down, I probably would only be able to remember one or two things! And that's just one day...

The daily journals help me a lot when I do my weekly review. I draw a quick summary, and then I type a brief outline into a Google task that's synced to my phone. When I have some time to write (usually when I'm trying to nurse A- to sleep), I turn that outline into paragraphs and post it as my weekly review. Then, when I have time, I do a monthly review. It's amazing to see the kind of progress A- makes on a monthly basis.

I treat my journal as my most important discretionary activity, so I focus on it before working, reading, coding, or doing other things, but after making sure I've had enough time for sleep and personal care. I'm lucky that I can do that, though. If you don't have the time and you can't find an activity that you can reduce in order to make time, don't beat yourself up about it. =) See if you can write a few quick notes or take a picture, and trust that it will likely help you remember later on. It's okay even if you just capture a little here and there. You'll still get plenty of things to smile about through the years.

Hope that helps!