Weekly review: Week ending April 14, 2017

Posted: - Modified: | review, weekly

We focused on the garden this week, taking advantage of warm weather and a long weekend. We disassembled the old raised bed in the middle of the garden and sifted the soil to remove all those roots. Then we moved the soil to the new 3'x12' raised bed that W- built out of cedar, mixing in plenty of compost and peat moss. A- loved digging in and crawling over the soil, helping us screen the soil and pick out roots, walking down the backyard while holding on to our hands, and splashing water around when cleaning up. I think it will definitely be worth spending extra time, energy, and money on the garden this year. So many opportunities for sensory play. The size 5 shoes I got her fit pretty well. She spends most of the time barefoot or in socks, though, and the backyard is perfect for that.

I took A- to the ROM when it was rainy. We wandered around the biodiversity gallery. A- was okay with petting the mount of the beaver, but not the beaver pelt that was on the table, and she wasn't keen on the mount of the raccoon or the snakeskin on the table. She was okay with touching walrus skin, though. It's neat to have all these textures available. I also caught the museum highlights tour, and I wandered through the Asian ceramics gallery while A- was sleeping.

(A- got her own tour of ceramics and glassware at home thanks to W-, who patiently let her drink out of practically every type of mug or glass we had.)

It's amazing to see A- learn and connect concepts. This week, she saw W- dip his potato wedges in ketchup before eating them. She promptly insisted on dipping more potato wedges in ketchup and feeding them to us – a two-step process! Dipping also encouraged her to taste a bit of the ketchup, and she dipped some cucumber into my curry too. She recognizes the clothes in the small cloth book, and she uses the book to ask for practice wearing the clothes. She continues to enjoy sprinkling things when we're cooking. On the flip side, she sometimes resists brushing her teeth, sitting on the potty, or going to sleep. She wants more independence and control, I guess!

She recognizes more vocabulary words, too. "Sleep" often gets a fake snore of acknowledgment from her, even if she's wide awake and we just mentioned it as part of regular conversation. She knows "lamb" and "giraffe" refer to her stuffed toys. Time to add more word/gesture pairs to our routines.

The parent advocacy workshop session this week focused on special education and working with the school system's identification, placement, and review committee (IPRC) to create an individual education plan (IEP). My main take-away was that it can be a difficult and intimidating process, so it's a good idea to bring a support person to the meetings. I found a detailed handout with ideas for accommodations and notes on teachers' perspectives, too, and I'll probably reach out to the author to see if I can track down some of the sources.

The early literacy workshop on Thursday was sparsely attended. A- was a little hesitant in the beginning, but she warmed up eventually. She enjoyed taking the books out of the box and putting them back in. Since there weren't a lot of people around, we took advantage of the opportunity for mutual brain-picking. It was interesting hearing about the facilitator's experiences raising his kids, especially in terms of helping them learn social skills.

We were slightly under the weather due to sniffles, but we still managed to do things around the house. W- rotisseried two chickens, and I made carrot muffins as a way of getting more vegetables into our lives.

I also did a lot of consulting: analyzing searches, fixing table CSS, copying over old data, and dusting off and completing a half-done change to an organizational visualization.

Next: more gardening!

Blog posts

Sketches

Focus areas and time review

  • Business (3.6h – 2%)
    • Earn (3.6h – 100% of Business)
  • Relationships (0.6h – 0%)
  • Discretionary – Productive (10.8h – 6%)
    • Drawing (1.4h)
    • Emacs (0.2h)
    • Coding (0.5h)
  • Discretionary – Play (0.6h – 0%)
  • Personal routines (19.2h – 11%)
  • Unpaid work (77.0h – 45%)
    • Childcare (63.9h – 38% of total)
  • Sleep (56.2h – 33% – average of 8.0 per day)

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