• Kaizen
  • I tweaked my Emacs News workflow so that it was easy to browse links with eww while categorizing them, filter item titles to remove brackets, and skip links I don’t want to include.
  • W- fixed his car’s struts.
• Us
  • I split my ROM membership with Rebecca from music class.
• Gross motor
  • It turns out that the backyard can turn into a surprisingly serviceable ice rink even without any particular effort on our parts. A- insisted that W- get her skates from downstairs. She stood on the deck, pointedly staring, until the skates were brought. W- and I helped her start to learn how to skate in the backyard.
• Fine motor
  • A- was curious about the sungkaan hanging on our wall, so W- dug up the bag of shells from one of our shelves and I taught her a little about playing. She patiently played through a number of long turns, picking up a handful and carefully distributing the shells one at a time with her other hand. Before she moved on to something else, she was sometimes able to drop one shell at a time from a hand with several shells.
• Language
  • W- asked, “Milk or water?” A- said, “Milk forever!” W- said, “Are you nine years old all of a sudden?”
• Music
  • A- liked the “Jack be nimble” game from music class, which teaches response inhibition. We jumped only when we got to the “jump” word in the rhyme, and we took turns.
• Eating
  • A- discovered that she likes pepperoni.
• Sleep
  • A- was resisting napping, so I lay on the couch and closed my eyes. She “read” a little out loud, then climbed onto the couch with me and fell asleep.
• Emotion
  • A- used my drawing to talk about the different zones of regulation.
  • A- talked about how she likes to be in the yellow happy silly zone.
  • A- wanted to watch more videos, and she got a bit frustrated when I set the limit. She tried to hide my phone in her sweater and said she wanted it all to herself. But it didn’t escalate into a full-blown tantrum – wow!
• Household
  • “I want to vacuum.” A- has gotten over her dislike of the vacuum cleaner and will happily vacuum if she has hearing protectors on.
• Social
  • A- wanted to sign up for nature class, so I registered for some this spring.
  • A- enjoyed showing off to J-‘s friend. She liked hanging out in the kitchen and talking to J- and K-.
  • We had dimsum with W-‘s family. A- ate lots of everything, including three stalks of bok choy. She found the cashews I’d packed as an emergency snack for her, and insisted on passing it around via the lazy Susan so that everyone could take some.
  • A- liked walking to the museum with her friends from music class.
• Pretend
  • A- seems more open to having a babysitter. She asked me to pretend to be a babysitter taking care of her.
• Other
  • The forecast called for freezing rain and I still felt under the weather, so W- dropped us off at “school” and picked us up again afterwards.
• Thoughts
  • I tend to overthink when I’m anxious about something, but I do actually find it helpful to get a better picture of the probabilities so that I can estimate the value of different choices.
  • I thought some more about having a babysitter. I’m tempted to have more focused time for consulting and skill development, and to set aside a little time for Emacs. But spending time with A- is also so much fun, so it’s hard to decide.
  • Definitely preferred having spent this day and yesterday with A- instead of having a babysitter, even though I was tired. It was fun listening to A-‘s made up songs and her joy about birthdays, appreciate her emotional growth, and indulge her flights of fancy.

Blog posts

• Weekly review: Week ending February 15, 2019
• Weekly review: Week ending February 8, 2019
• Weekly review: Week ending February 1, 2019
• 2019-02-18 Emacs news

Time