• Gross motor
  • W- taught A- how to do the wheelbarrow exercise.
  • A- practised riding her balance bike down the slope. She can't coast yet, but she's starting to be able to manage a little more speed.
• Fine motor
  • A- was interested in making paper chains. W- showed her how to do it because she asked to make daisy chains after reading Piglet and Mama.
  • A- had fun closing one eye.
• Language
  • A- could name the opposite of something even without the matching card from the Opposites game.
• Art
  • A- sometimes tries to draw letters, and she actually does a pretty good job at some of them: M, L, J… One time I couldn't figure out what she was doing. She scribbled circles and said something that I couldn't quite figure out: F? S? After several repetitions, rephrasings, and lots of "Mama no understand!"s, I connected the dots with her previously pretending being Ramon from the "Ish" book. She was telling me she drew "ish." When I finally understood, she lit up and started drawing more "-ish"es.
• Self-care and independence
  • We were able to skip the long nursing session in the morning.
  • A- let me snuggle her to bed. She insisted on being in my arms and being sung to. She was overtired and didn't brush after bedtime milk, so I'm going to switch to offering water instead.
• Sleep
  • A- didn't want to nap in bed, but I was super-sleepy. W- took her for a walk in the stroller while I napped. He said that she quickly went to sleep once in the stroller. I don't mind using the stroller as a nap crutch for the next little while, at least until we get weaning sorted out.
  • Day 3 of taking A- out for a stroller nap in the middle of the afternoon. She consistently falls asleep quickly and stays asleep for a few hours. It's a lot more pleasant than trying to keep her from pulling at my clothes when she's in the carrier, and I don't mind walking to the grocery store for one or two things. I still don't feel comfortable getting a nap while she's out in the backyard. I've been able to wash dishes and catch up on my journal, though, so that's a start. I'm just going to have to figure out how to continue this as the weather cools down, and how to adjust when she stops napping. In the meantime, this is good.
  • A- was very upset. Weaning was tough, she wasn't keen on bedtime, and she definitely didn't want to be left alone for a few minutes while I got something from downstairs. I couldn't nurse her into calmness because I was trying not to stay dependent on weaning, so I just stayed close, listened, and offered to rock her or hug her. She eventually fell asleep amidst bursts of crying.
• Household
  • W- got home late. A- insisted on spending all evening with him. W- handled the whole bedtime routine while I did some paperwork for my mom and tidied up. A- and I have also been experimenting with delaying nursing, so we'll see how that goes.
• Social
  • A- wanted to go out for a walk, so we visited Joy and J- at their place. We read lots of books. They also liked playing with blocks, riding toys, and balloons.
  • On the way home from the playground, we ran into Joy and J-, so we invited them over. J- and A- snacked on grapes, proved with watercolours, and played music. A- let J- turn the moon light on and off, but she got possessive when J- tried turning on the cloud light or touching her pet sheep, so we wrapped up and shared some buns and muffins with them. Good socialization practice!
  • A- was very amused by the "Disappearing A-" magic trick. She and W- stood together, then W- held a big towel in front of both of them. I wondered out loud where A- was. W- counted down while shepherding her behind him, then dropped the towel. I marvelled loudly at A-'s disappearance, ignoring the loud giggling behind W-'s legs.
  • A- wanted to stay up. I was really tired, so I lay down and closed my eyes on our floor bed while she played. She was doing all right, and then wham! She accidentally rolled into me and hit my lip pretty hard. I teared up because it hurt a lot, and I put pressure on it to stop the bleeding. A- was pretty concerned. "What are Mama's tires (tears) doing?" I explained that I had an owie and that the tears meant that it hurt, but that I would feel better soon and that I still loved her. She took my phone and pretended to show me videos, since she likes watching videos of herself and she thought I might like to see videos too. My lip hurt too much for me to read her a book, so she read Little Excavator out loud all by herself. I closed my eyes again, this time shielding my face with my hands. I heard her playing some more, and then she exclaimed, "Yay!" She had successfully diapered her stuffed sheep. "Would Mama like Sheep?" she asked. So I snuggled with Sheep for a bit while she played. She also tried nursing for reassurance, but I had to say no to that and to gently prevent her from pulling my clothes. I offered to cuddle her instead, but she was still too active and I was worried about getting hit again. Eventually she settled in, saying in a small voice, "I want Mama, Mama, Mama, I want Mama," and we both drifted off.
• Pretend
  • A- did the motions and sounds that she remembered from watching the video of her sticking her tongue out when she was an infant. It's fun watching her reenact things with surprising attention to detail.
  • A- pretended that we were related to the pediatrician.
• Kaizen
  • We were able to go on a family bike trip, yay! W- and I biked up to Walmart, and I brought A- in the trailer.
  • A-'s been fascinated with letters and numbers recently, so I asked her if she wanted me to look into replacing the elephant decals on her walls with letters and numbers. She immediately jumped on the idea. I explained that I still needed to look for something we liked, order it, wait for it to be delivered… She would not be dissuaded. "Replace elephants! Replace elephants!" W- moved the elephants up, wrote a few large letters and numbers on pieces of paper, and taped them up on the walls. We'll see how this goes.
  • W- took care of A- while I rebalanced my portfolio in my registered accounts, converting a large portion of my TD e-series into ETFs. It was a little nerve-wracking to make sure I got all the numbers right, but I think it's okay now. I'll probably keep the nonregistered account as e-series for now so that I don't have to worry about paperwork or capital gains tradeoffs.
  • W- got our land line converted to a dry loop for DSL. I should probably memorize my other number for messages.
• Us
  • I submitted a special power of attorney to the Philippine Consulate General for notarization and authentication. It turned out that the fee was CAD 33.75 per copy, so I submitted one set instead of the four or seven I'd originally planned. I'll wait for the lawyers to tell me if we need more before I put the package together for mailing. If they can get by with one original, that's great. If not, it's just another field trip with A-. There's a community centre next to the consulate and a library close by, so maybe we'll just go there directly instead of going to the Ontario Science Centre first.
• Oops
  • I learned the hard way that you shouldn't freeze and thaw an unopened bottle of olive oil, even if you had somehow survived freezing and thawing partially full bottles of olive oil before. Actually, we go through a bottle of olive oil quickly enough that I should probably leave it in the pantry instead of worrying about whether it will go rancid.

Blog posts

• Adjusting to weaning
• Questions I often ask myself
• 2018-08-20 Emacs news
• Monthly review: July 2018
• Weekly review: Week ending August 17, 2018
• Ledger-cli and reporting stock allocations

Sketches

• 2018-08-20a Stage update - weaning, hours, appointments, preference #parenting #planning

Time

Category	The other week %	Last week %	Diff	h/wk	Diff h/wk
A-	43.6	39.3	-4.3	66.0	-7.2
Sleep	30.9	34.4	3.4	57.7	5.8
Personal	7.1	11.7	4.5	19.6	7.6
Unpaid work	6.0	8.7	2.7	14.6	4.5
Discretionary – Productive	2.6	4.6	2.1	7.8	3.5
Discretionary – Family	2.3	0.7	-1.6	1.2	-2.7
Business	0.3	0.6	0.4	1.1	0.7
Discretionary – Play	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Discretionary – Social	7.2	0.0	-7.2	0.0	-12.1

We continue to work on weaning, so even though my time records say I spent more hours in bed, it took more effort to help A- settle down throughout the night since I couldn't just nurse her back to sleep. She also strongly preferred spending time with W- whenever he was available, so W- took over the bedtime routine while I did more chores and cooking. I did some more writing during A-'s stroller naps, but I haven't figured out how to fit consulting and other discretionary activities back in my life. Maybe after we figure out weaning and our sleep settles down again…