Monthly review: July 2025

Aug 3, 2025| monthly, review

2025-07-31-10 July 2025 #monthly #review

Text from sketch

July 2025 Summer! Park playdates, swimming, exploration

🎇 Swimming, poi, fireworks
🏊 High Park pool
🥖 farmers market bread
🎮 Minecraft at the park
🏊 somersault, somer-pepper
🎮 Stardew Valley Expanded
🏖️ sand restaurant; supermarket sims
🦈 more diving toys
🛍️ errands: clothes, books
🗘 poi
🧺 snacks
🏊 3 breaths while swimming
🂡 card games
🏊 swim checklists, lessons
🏊 deep end test, water slide
🏊 needs more practice to pass
🪄 LEGO Glinda and Elphaba's dorm
🤖 LEGO Mindstorms
⚔️ lightsabers
👕 clothes shopping
🥣 mulberries
🤖 LEGO Spike Prime
🚴 bike playdate
🏊 last swim lesson; Sunnyside party
🏊 doing our own thing at the pool
😃 Biidaasige Park, ziplines; Korean BBQ
🏺 KidSpark; pottery
🥣 Kidspark; wontons
🎨 Perler beads
🫐 more mulberries
🚴 bike playdate

2025-07-31-10

This month was mostly about playdates, swimming, and exploring Toronto. I asked A+ if she wanted summer to be mostly structured time or unstructured time, and she picked unstructured time. Summer break means getting to play with our friends earlier in the afternoon. We usually went to playgrounds with splash pads or wading pools because it was so hot and sunny. Mulberries were in season, so A+ enjoyed foraging for them and crushing them into paste. Whenever A+ was deeply absorbed in playing with her friends, I chatted with other grown-ups, drew thoughts on my iPad, or read a book.

I used to bring two boxes of popsicles in a large cooler, but A+'s usual playgroup tends to be smaller these days because many kids are in summer camps or out travelling. I figured out how to pack a few popsicles into the 2L Zojirushi insulated container instead, so that helped us stay cool even during small playdates. If it's just the two of us, I take the 0.5L one, which is just enough for two pops.

When we didn't have playdates scheduled, A+ and I went to the pool. She had fun figuring out how to move through the water. She likes experimenting with things herself and showing me what she's figured out more than me setting exercises or telling her what to do, and I'm happy to leave that to other people. It turned out that we can register for city-run swimming lessons at the public outdoor pools, so I signed A+ up for one-on-one swimming lessons at our favourite pool. She enjoyed learning from the instructors and breezed through most of the checklists. I sat near the fence and watched her talk to the instructors, trying out their suggestions and getting the hang of new skills. She struggled with the last skill (continuous 25m front crawl) on the Ultra Swim 4 checklist, so that might be something that'll wait for next year. She was able to pass the deep end test once, and had so much fun going down the water slide. She failed it after that, though, and has decided to focus on other things for now. I know all the other things she does (monkey bars, biking, even just the growing she does throughout the months) will help her, so there's no need to drill past the point of frustration at this time. She wants to prioritize hanging out with her friends in the afternoon, and that's fine. This is her learning, and the social skills she picks up from playdates are important too. It's easier to work with the grain than against it. I know she'll learn quickly when she wants to.

We've been exploring other parts of the city: the ziplines at the new Biidaasige Park, the KidSpark area at the Ontario Science Centre fragment that moved downtown, Sunnyside Pool's 100th anniversary celebration. A+ tried out poi at a street festival and remembered that my sister had taught me how to do it a long time ago, so I showed her how to get started. I made another set of poi so that we could do it together. That was nice.

Some days we stayed inside because of rain, heat, or wildfire smoke. A+ enjoyed the LEGO Mindstorms workshop that she did at the library, so we decided to get a LEGO Spike Prime set. W- dusted off his old LEGO Mindstorms sets, too. I've been slowly going through the different lessons in the unit so that I can learn more about robotics. We started a Stardew Valley Expanded / Ridgeside Village playthrough, which was fun. A+ likes to focus on relationships, while I'm happy to do the gruntwork to get the farm up and running.

I enjoyed the Emacs Carnival July theme on the writing experience. It inspired me to tweak my config and write about my workflow. I've also been taking advantage of quiet mornings to do more thinking, coding, and writing. On her own, A+ likes to spend a fair bit of time playing Minecraft, watching videos, and imagining Star Wars stories, which is all right. When she wants to spend time with us, she's keen to help out around the house or go out to interesting places.

Next month, my days will still probably focus on taking A+ to hang out with friends at playgrounds. We'll also experiment with a half-day summer camp focused on the pottery wheel. A+ wants to celebrate her half-birthday since the weather's warmer. If she wants to make cookies, I'm happy to practise decorating them to look like Hutts from Star Wars. (She's got ideas.) I'm working on my annual review. The moment-of-the-day drawings and monthly reviews have been really helpful in revisiting the year. Maybe someday I'll do weekly check-ins or reviews again. More focused work like dusting off and improving EmacsConf infrastructure will probably wait until September or October, when I might have more predictable focus time again. We'll see what the new virtual class is like. A+ will probably find it boring, but at least we'll have more options for our informal field trips thanks to our explorations. At the moment, it's great to be able to go with the flow, seeing where A+ wants to wander. Looking forward to learning more!

Blog posts

Sketches

Time

Category	Previous month %	This month %	Diff %	h/wk	Diff h/wk
A+	26.3	34.3	8.0	59.5	13.4
Sleep	27.3	30.7	3.4	53.3	5.8
Discretionary - Family	0.3	0.0	-0.3	0.0	-0.5
Business	0.9	0.5	-0.4	0.9	-0.6
Unpaid work	4.5	4.0	-0.5	6.9	-0.9
Personal	11.5	9.4	-2.1	16.2	-3.6
Discretionary - Productive	14.8	10.7	-4.0	18.6	-6.8
Discretionary - Play	14.6	10.5	-4.1	18.2	-6.9

Shifting a little time back from Stardew Valley towards writing and coding instead.

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