• Kaizen
  • W- had a pair of jeans that were a little too worn out to wear to the office, and he already had enough pairs for working around the house. I tried them on, and they fit much better than my other pairs of jeans. I hand-sewed patches under the holes (“Visible mending is in!”) and shortened them, keeping the original hem. I broke a serger needle trying to finish the shortened part, so I switched to pinking with scissors and zigzagging it with the sewing machine. Yay me!
• Us
  • I started planning a possible trip to visit my sister and her family.
• Gross motor
  • A- went all the way to the basement to fetch another 3 lb. weight so that we could both have one. “I’m doing curls,” she said.
  • A- figured out how to jump and spin at the same time.
  • Me: Do you have a “let’s go swimming” dance?
    A-: No, not yet. I have to make it up first.
  • We went swimming. A- really liked it. She practised getting back into the pool, and she also liked dogpaddling around with a Puddle Jumper on. Afterwards, we went to the playground.
• Language
  • In the car seat: “Why am I having no blanket? Silly Mama Pig.” (She was pretending to be a piglet that day.)
  • “Come with me, boy.” (A- has been having fun calling W- “boy”.)
  • A- asked clarifying questions about the words we used.
  • A- was dawdling, so I asked, “Are you going to brush your teeth?” A- replied, “I am going to in a minute.”
  • A- was interested in Tagalog books, and requested a few of them at bedtime.
  • I told A-, “Watch out for the seeds.” She said, “I’m not watching out.”
  • A-: I learned a Tagalog word today.
    W-: Oh really? Which one?
    A-: All of them.
    W-: That’s great!
    A-: That’s pretty good.
  • A- trying to wrangle a video out of W-: “What will you watch with me?”
  • A- was getting frustrated by how I was doing something. She said, “Follow your instructions!”
• Music
  • Another of A-‘s songs: “Once I had a cracker, a cracker, a cracker. It had peanut butter. it made me eat it, eat it, eat it, because it had another layer.”
  • At music class, we did “Criss Cross Applesauce” on the kids’ backs two times. Then the teacher invited the kids to switch roles and do “Criss Cross Applesauce” on our backs. A- did!
• Self-care and independence
  • A- pinched her finger near the hinge the tongs, slicing into her skin. Ouch! I put pressure on it to stop the bleeding, hugged her to help her calm down, and put a special bandage on it.
  • “I want a diaper,” A- said. “You’re going to have to wait until Mama comes out,” W- said. “I’ll get it myself,” she said, stomping off cheerfully.
  • A- actually let me spray her a bit with the shower head at the pool.
  • A- switched to showers instead of baths, even at home.
• Emotion
  • A- had a tantrum in the supermarket, probably because she was tired and hungry. She kept running a little ahead of me. Lots of sympathetic looks from other people. Eventually she calmed down enough to want to be picked up.
• Household
  • While I napped, W-, J-, and two of J-‘s friends made wontons. A- even got to try making some. Yum!
  • We all watched Jamie Oliver’s episode on salmon. When it finished, A- said, “Let’s go. I want to do it.”
  • A- helped make tonkatsu. She breaded six cutlets with just a little help.
• Social
  • A- saw K- drawing. A- said, “I can’t draw. I can only scribble.” She got paper, scribbled something, and gave it to K-, saying, “This is for you, K-!” In turn, K- offered to draw her something. A- asked for a cow drawing, and after that, she asked for a pig drawing.
  • The drop-in centre we usually go to closed for a week for March Break. On the first day it reopened, it was amusing to see how everyone was glad to be back to the usual routines.
  • A- had fun playing the “not allowed up the hill” game. She ran up the hill and looked at me expectantly. I put my hands on my hips and pretended to be stern, saying, “You’re not allowed up the hill!” She ran down the hill and gave me a hug. We repeated this quite a few times. I think she knows she’s definitely allowed up the hill, but this lets her play with boundary-crossing and reconciliation.
  • After music class, we went to the museum with AO- and her grandma. Since her grandma couldn’t chase after AO-, we kept them company.
  • We bought a bag of Harvest Snaps snacks after a while of not having them around. A- said, “I want you to write my name on it.” She remembered when we accidentally bought two bags, and we wrote her name on one and W-‘s and my name on the other.
• World
  • “We live in Canada. That’s our flag.”
  • A- was interested in sungka and pandanggo sa ilaw again.
  • A- wanted to go to the Ontario Science Centre instead of to the drop-in centre. She was fascinated by the conveyor belt in the construction area, and spent a while turning the wheel in order to bring blocks up our down.
  • While walking back from the playground, we saw someone tapping the maple trees for sap.

Blog posts

• Visual Book Notes: Between Parent and Child (2003)
• 2019-03-18 Emacs news
• Visual Book Notes: No-Drama Discipline (2014)
• Weekly review: Week ending March 15, 2019
• Weekly review: Week ending March 8, 2019

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