Monthly review: August 2018

Posted: Sep 8, 2018 - Modified: May 29, 2019| monthly, review

Field trip
- We went to the Horse Palace and caught the show.
Gross motor
- A- got the hang of doing forward rolls, wheelbarrow exercises, and ladder exercises.
- Lots of balance bike practice. Still taking short strides, but starting to be okay with slopes.
Fine motor
- Interested in drawing letters, and can sometimes make pretty good approximations.
Sensory
- Lots of wading in wading pools and enjoying summer in the playground.
Language
- A- bruised her toe the day before. Right after she woke up, she said, "I don't want to go to the hospital. I will try not to go to the hospital."
- "We can do kids' yoga later." "I want to do it now." "You're impatient." "I wait patiently."
- "I don't like Mama's friends. I like my own friends. I like E-."
- "I don't know that word. The water word," A- said, referring to the word "gulp" from a book we had read earlier that afternoon.
- Talking about thoughts: "I thought about the cart."
- I said, "I got you." A- said, "We both got each other."
Self-care and independence
- A- practised separation by going up and down the stairs several times, saying "I will come right back downstairs just like I promised to." She also pretended to go to school and come back, and to go to work and come back.
- A- went upstairs to get her own clothes all by herself. She came down with a shirt and two pairs of pants. Turned out she wanted to wear one pair of pants as a hat.
- At A-'s 30-month checkup, she measured 88 cm and 10.3 kg.
- A- was crawling around when she stumbled and cut her lip. She didn't ask to nurse, although she was happy to do so when I offered.
- A- mostly sat still for the ultrasound exam. The cardiologist said that the VSD is pretty insignificant now, although there's a slight leak in her aortic valve and the muscle bundle continues to grow slowly. We'll follow up next year.
Emotion
- A- is definitely not a big fan of weaning.
- A- stomped down the hallway, hangry tantrum in full swing. She stopped at the end of the tape on the floor and did a few squats just like the ladder exercise that W- taught her, and then resumed her tantrum.
Household
- A- was very interested in mending, and wanted to put tape over the holes I made in a piece of paper.
- I was feeding Neko some wet cat food. I noticed I had reached the end of the can, so I said to myself, "I'm going to need another one of these." As I scraped the last of the cat food into a bowl, A- fetched another can of cat food and gave it to me, all without being asked.
Social
- A- had fun hiding something behind her back and showing one empty hand, then holding it with the other hand and showing the first hand empty.
- We went to Sunnyside Beach with Jen and E-.
- We had dimsum with W-'s family.
- I was exhausted. While I cat-napped, A- read me a story, and then she wiped my face with a damp washcloth.
- A- had fun playing a shushing game. She asked me to make a loud noise, and then put a finger to her lips and hushed me.
Pretend
- Multiple levels of indirection! A- pretended to be S- pretending to be a cat, labeling herself as "S- cat" while eating pretend wet food.
- A- wanted to copy the way the Cat in the Hat held his hands.
- A- pretended to play a tug-of-war with an imaginary carrot, roleplaying the scene from "Warning! Do Not Touch!".
- A- reenacted scenes from the Curious George book. She liked pretending to be caught in a hat or blown away with balloons. She also liked pretending to go to the zoo and distribute balloons.
- 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.
- We're slowly moving away from plastic toys, so we made a cardboard kitchen for A-. She had fun cooking an egg on the stovetop and baking a pizza in the oven.
- A- asked for a pretend microwave. I glued white paper on a cereal box, drew the microwave interface, and cut the door open.
- I made a cardboard point-of-sale terminal with a coin drawer, a scale, and a slot for pulling out a receipt. A- liked it very much.
- A- played pretend ultrasound quite a few times, raiding the sticker bin after each exam. She also kept revisiting dental surgery in our drawings and stories.
- A- liked pushing books through a slot in the coffee table legs, pretending to return them to the library. She also pretended to request one of her favourite books from a librarian.
Cognition
- "I want to nurse." "Remember, we may need to stop nursing soon." "I want Mama to buy me a pacifier."
- We played the Opposites game.
Kaizen
- W- fixed his glasses and I started patching my carrier.
- 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.
- W- got our land line converted to a dry loop for DSL. I should probably memorize my other number for messages.
- I updated my ledger to reflect my conversion of many of my TD e-series fund units to ETFs.
Us
- We met up with Linda Ristevski for a library tour.
- I met up with Curtis and his family at Sick Kids.
- David Ing dropped by since he was biking through our neighbourhood.
- I realized I was all done with nursing.

Blog posts

Sketches

Time

Category	Previous month %	This month %	Diff	h/wk	Diff h/wk
Unpaid work	4.4	7.3	2.9	12.3	4.9
Personal	5.9	8.3	2.4	13.9	4.0
Discretionary – Social	1.6	2.3	0.7	3.9	1.2
Discretionary – Productive	2.8	3.4	0.7	5.8	1.1
Discretionary – Family	0.9	1.6	0.7	2.6	1.1
Discretionary – Play	0.2	0.3	0.0	0.5	0.1
Business	1.7	0.7	-1.0	1.2	-1.7
Sleep	35.1	33.0	-2.1	55.5	-3.5
A-	47.1	43.0	-4.1	72.2	-6.9

A- switched over to strongly preferring W- because I'm weaning her, so he handled more childcare. I worked less because I needed more sleep and patience to help with the disruption to A-'s routines. Next month: Music classes, other plans