A- got a new conformer (the ocular prosthesis that supports the bones around her eye socket so that her skull can grow more symmetrically). This one is taller, although it doesn't keep her eyelids as open as the previous one did. We're still going with a plain conformer instead of a painted shell, even if it draws more questions from strangers. ("What's wrong with her eye?") The conformers are much cheaper to replace than a painted shell, so we don't feel like we need to hover over A- or turn places upside down in case of loss. Our ocularist shaped the conformer with a ridge to help it stay in the eye, since the regular shell shape kept slipping out. And hey, if someone recognizes it as a conformer for microphthalmia and strikes up a conversation with us, that's awesome. Microphthalmia affects about 1 in 10,000, and I've already met a few people with this condition or who have a family member with this condition. Yay connecting!

I'm curious about the science and technology behind this whole process, so I ordered the Clinical Ocular Prosthetics textbook when it was 50% off last Monday. Springer was having technical issues with their shopping cart, so I had to contact customer service to get two failed Paypal transactions sorted out. Anyway, the textbook should be here in one or two weeks. I look forward to working through it and sharing my notes.

I decided to get a membership to the Royal Ontario Museum, and we went three times last week. We also went to the High Park zoo. The capybaras were not in their paddock due to weather conditions, so we didn't get to see the new pups. There was a lamb, though!

Spending time with A- has been surprisingly enjoyable. We're both learning so much, and we haven't even reached the walking or talking stages. I expect her learning to really take off once she gets the hang of those things. Sure, she'll become more of a handful as she grows more independent and tests her boundaries, but that might be a good opportunity to test all the things I've been learning from books about parenting, communication, philosophy, and hostage negotiations. ;)

I'm curious about what the possibilities might be if we're still in a position to have a stay-at-home parent when she's old enough for school. I have a generally positive feeling about public school here. J- did fine with a bit of help with homework and study groups. Still, I wonder what education could be like with individualized attention and things that don't scale. I have a few years to explore our options before junior and senior kindergarten, which are optional in Toronto anyway. The things I've researched make me fairly optimistic about the possibilities in general, so it's really a matter of the specifics. We'll see.

Part of that preparation is learning how to work with existing systems, so that's where the parent advocacy workshop comes in. We discussed I statements this week, and we'll be talking about the school system next week. The social worker conducting the program has a lot of experience with families who homeschool their kids, so I've asked for more information on that too.

A- did all right on the 12-month checklists assessed by Lisa, our Healthy Children Healthy Babies nurse. Lisa also complimented us on our feeding relationship when she did the NCAST feeding scale.

Another milestone: A- can connect 2×2 Duplo pieces together much of the time! She sometimes needs a little help orienting the pieces, but still… Way cool! A- also assembles, pushes down on, and takes apart the salad spinner, especially if there are pieces of nori in it. She loves sprinkling herbs and salt. She sways from side to side when I sing certain songs, babbles with "da" and "ga" sounds, and strums her lips all on her own. So many fun things.

W- made sure we had plenty of yummy food in the fridge. This week worked out really well: shepherd's pie, cabbage rolls, buckwheat noodles with banchan, pizza, congee, and instant noodles. The blondies were not as awesome as last week's blondies, so I could use more practice.

We had time to go on a long walk with W-, and I even had a little time to catch up on movies. Over the course of several late nights, I watched Star Trek Beyond, Ghostbusters, and X-Men: Apocalypse. Yay!

Blog posts

• 2017-03-27 Emacs news
• Weekly review: Week ending March 24, 2017

Sketches

• 2017-03-26a Week ending 2017-03-24 #journal #weekly
• 2017-03-25a Saturday #daily #journal
• 2017-03-26b Sunday #daily #journal
• 2017-03-27a Monday #daily #journal
• 2017-03-28a Tuesday #daily #journal
• 2017-03-29a Wednesday #daily #journal
• 2017-03-30a Thursday #daily #journal
• 2017-03-31a Friday #daily #journal

Focus areas and time review

• Business (2.1h – 1%)
  • Earn (1.8h – 87% of Business)
    • ☐ Earn: E1: 1-2 hours of consulting
  • Build (0.3h – 12% of Business)
    • ☑ Prepare invoice
  • Connect (0.0h – 0% of Business)
• Relationships (3.0h – 1%)
• Discretionary – Productive (2.0h – 1%)
  • Drawing (1.3h)
  • Emacs (0.7h)
  • ☑ Follow up on Paypal and Springer
• Discretionary – Play (4.5h – 2%)
• Personal routines (18.4h – 10%)
• Unpaid work (80.4h – 47%)
  • Childcare (64.2h – 38% of total)
• Sleep (57.6h – 34% – average of 8.2 per day)