We managed to make it out to the playground this week. I bundled her into a snowsuit and she enjoyed the swing, slide, and seesaw. Back at home, she was interested in standing astride the balance bike a few times. She also enjoyed lifting heavy things over her head and tossing them down. I encouraged her to throw bags of lentils from her tower down to her rocking chair, which helped absorb the impact.

A- can open doorknobs now! She also figured out how to repeatedly squeeze and open scissors, and can cut all the way through an index card if I hold the card for her. She’s interested in picking things up with her toes like I do.

A- sorted cans of cat food by colour into five groups. It was fun seeing her look around and light up when she saw a matching can. She also put one of her toys onto a Duplo car, said “Ride!”, and rolled the car down a slope, so she’s getting the hang of wheels too. She likes rolling things down a slope to hit a target, and calling out what she hit if she missed her called shot.

Now that pottying is well-established, we decided to stop offering videos as an option for potty time. It wasn’t worth the momentary upset whenever she wanted to watch more videos of herself and we wanted her to move on to another activity. She still asks for them from time to time, but she also accepts being told stories or being read to. She seems to pick up words and ideas when we review her videos together, so maybe I’ll find another place in her routines for video review. I can select videos and put them in an album for her, and that might guide her activities for the afternoon too.

A- occasionally requests Cattus Petasatus while she’s on the potty, which amuses us greatly. The Cozy Classics version of Pride and Prejudice is a regular at bedtime, too.

A- strung quite a few words together in these groups of frequently associated thoughts. For example, she liked the picture I took of her when she was upset and she didn’t want to wake up. She often said, “Upset picture, cat pajamas, no wake up, ni (nurse) bed,” practically all in one breath. When I was pretending to sleep in the hopes of getting her to sleep before 5 AM, she repeated sentences like “Mama, read you. Lights on.”

She showed some interest in music this week. She sang parts of Baa Baa Black Sheep and the little ditty we made up about Put Away. She asked me to bring down the ukulele, and she played with the strings while we sang. It made up for not having been able to go to music classes these past few weeks.

A- liked carrying her stuffed sheep around in a sling, carefully tucking a small blanket around it just like I tuck a blanket around her when she’s in the carrier. She’s also gotten better at both imitating us when we brush our teeth and letting me brush her teeth. She’s been working on coordinating the use of a fork and a spoon. She took her T-shirt and her pajamas off all by herself. She sometimes insisted on my waiting for her as she climbs up and down the stairs by herself. She liked doing things at the same time we did, whether it was taking pictures with the camera or cleaning the kitchen.

We got our flu shots, bought more gifts, and packed for the trip. I donated A-‘s outgrown clothes and walker to the JFRC. I found the Reddit JSON for upvoted posts and incorporated that into my Emacs News workflow. I started looking into photobooks, and I’m leaning towards figuring out ImageMagick incantations so that I have more control.

The major system update at work seems to be going well. I fixed a couple of small bugs related to tagged documents and header internationalization. No emergencies, yay! I’ll probably still bring the work laptop just in case.

Next week: travel and family time…