As I type this, it's the day after returning home from Hannah's first road trip. We're still decompressing a bit, and it's good to be home. (Note: It's now a few days later and I'm still looking for time to finish this. But that's how things go.)
Before going through the trip details, it's the list of various milestones. The first one is that there were some first steps. She's been on the cusp of walking for a while, with a very stable stance and strong enough legs to push her stroller around, even uphill through grass. At this point, she seems pretty capable of walking halfway across the room, and has even caught herself from falling a couple times. So maybe in another week or so she'll be moving about completely comfortably on foot when she wants to.
Her third tooth and fourth tooth are emerging. These are the two front uppers. We're trying to "brush" her teeth (wipe down her mouth with a cloth at night). She doesn't like that at all. My understanding at this point is that this is mostly about getting her used to having people poke around in her mouth so that when we get to the dentist, she's a little bit more used to it. My dentist suggested that we ask the pediatrician about prescription flouride something-something. It won't hurt to ask, and I have some vague memories of a little pink pill that I would eat at dinner when I was young.
She continues to be a good eater. The only food that she seems to turn down is bread, and I think it's a texture thing. We haven't gone through tree nuts or seafood yet, but we should be getting to those soon. We also need to start to increase her meal sizes and such because I think around a year is when they should be getting most of their calories from solid foods instead of breast milk. I also think we need to start giving her more meat.
We're kind of starting to do some sleep stuff with her. I've started putting her down in the crib and sitting with her until she falls asleep. It's only been a few times so far. But it seems to take her about 20 minutes. There's definitely some crying and protesting going on before she goes down, but at some point she just kind of lies down and starts to calm down and go to sleep. I'm glad that (so far) we haven't had to do the hour-long battle or anything like that. I don't know if this specifically helps anything, but I find myself sitting down on the floor next to the crib because I think standing up is a cue that she might get picked up. So I try to interact with her through the bars of the crib and come in at mattress level rather than from above.
She fits very comfortably in some of her 18-month clothes already. In particular, her 18-month PJs seemed long in the legs a month ago, but now they look like they fit just right. It will be interesting to see where she lands on the growth chart when we're at her one year check-up next week. She's tall enough that she's getting ready to outgrow her car seat, and we're starting the process of figuring out what's next for her. The current car seat becomes too small for her when she reaches 30 inches, and at this point, she's somewhere around 27 or 28 inches. So we've got another month or two to figure that out.
We're actually set with a stroller right now, as Joan's mom found one for $5 at a garage sale that's in pretty good condition (and costs around $200 new). It's forward-facing, and I think Hannah will enjoy seeing the world coming at her rather than watching it pass her by. She'll also have a better view of things so that she can wave at the kids and animals and whatever else there is that's out there. The only downside for now is that it doesn't have a cup holder, but I'm going to try to design and 3D print one that will hopefully work with it. I feel as though if I wanted a side-hustle, that's the sort of thing that I can imagine myself doing. But I don't want a side hustle right now.
The tenosynovitis (wrist pain and inflammation) continues. It's not too bad, except when it is. I think I'm starting to get good at performing various activities without that wrist engagement, either by doing it differently or just using the other hand. I've got a more robust wrist guard that I use on and off, and sometimes I'm icing it down still. I anticipate a very long recovery for this, but I think it will be like a sprained ankle where one day I'll suddenly notice that it doesn't hurt anymore.
The road trip lasted 10 days, which is the longest she has been away from home, including her time in the NICU. We decided to take the drive in two days (stopping in Bakersfield both ways), which definitely feels like the right decision. She handled the first day of driving fine, and on the second day was mostly fine except for a big meltdown trying to get her into the carseat at the start. On the way back, she did a lot of sleeping, but also had periods of fussiness and not wanting to be in the car. And that car seat fussiness has continued into regular life, maybe because she doesn't know whether she's going to be trapped for over an hour or if it's going to be a 5 minute drive to a park. (But soon she'll have a completely different car seat experience, so maybe some of those negative associations will disappear?)
Hannah really enjoyed spending time with her Grammy (Joan's mom). And it was really nice to have a third pair of eyes watching her, which gave us a little more space than usual. I can definitely see how the family support structure is quite valuable if you lived in the same area as your relatives. But I also think we did pretty well with the combination of Joan working from home and me having some FMLA leave last year. I still don't know how people who work hourly jobs that had to jump back to work in the first few weeks do it.
Shoott happened to be doing a photo thing at the Gamble Gardens (where we got married) and so got a time slot with them and had some pictures taken. It was nice to be back in that place again, and I think they do an excellent job of keeping the place looking nice. I think we only bought a few photos, but that's fine. We really don't need dozens of photos because Joan does such a great job of taking photos regularly. But it's definitely good to have a couple high quality photos floating around in the mix.
We drove out to Livermore a couple times to see my parents. Hannah enjoyed that time, too. My parents have some legacy toys that have been around for a while that she got to play with. It's kind of amazing that the mid-1980s Fisher Price barn set is still there and generally intact, having survived two generations of children. There are some missing pieces at this point, but it seems like 80% of the set is still there.
But the big day was the birthday party. It was held at Patriot Corner at Shoup Park in Palo Alto. There were 40-ish people there to celebrate Hannah, and she held it together pretty well. There were some minor meltdowns, especially as we approached a nap time, but she was able to be calmed down. There was a mixture of Costco catering trays and Chinese food that my parent brought, and there were a lot of leftovers that were taken by various people (including us). The time was pretty much just open mingling, which worked out perfectly. The park itself is embedded in some redwood trees, which made for a great backdrop to the whole thing. There was a creek on the back side that happened to have water (sometimes it doesn't) and some of the kids were playing around in that. After we had things mostly cleaned up, an impromptu soccer match broke out among the kids from Joan's side of the family, which kind of felt like the perfect way for that time to wrap up.
I only remembered to take a couple photos, but I'm sure there are photos floating around, which we're trying to gather. So if you were there and took some photos, please text or email them to me so that we can add them to the collection.
Hannah got to visit with her 99-year-old great-grandmother a few times that week, too. It's somewhat crazy to think that they're nearly a century apart in age. We got a lot of good photos of the two playing together, and also some 4 generation photos. Great-grandma had a number of stuffed animals that she brought out for Hannah to play around with, and Hannah also got to push around a little stool all over the place. There was also some outside time on the grass in the back yard. I'm not sure what else to say about these visits because they were mostly just fun hangout times.
On to work stuff. I got my ART 240 course completely rebuilt for the new year. I've revamped the order a little bit to make things a bit simpler on the students (removed a more technical method and added some step-by-step instructions). I've also formalized the learning outcomes a bit, which gives things a bit more direction. I've also added in a feedback process for some of the projects, which will hopefully help to push the more advanced students a bit further while providing some additional support for the weaker students.
I've started work on the MATH 283 (Multivariable Calculus) course. It's been quite a few years since I last taught it, so there's some work that needs to be done to update how I present and organize the materials. I do have some videos I made back then that are still good enough to use, though this definitely sits as a class that might stand for a revamp of the videos, especially now that I have manim to possibly do some 3D graphical things. But that's going to be something that goes into the "maybe" pile. One thing that may push that one forward is that the textbook has added a new chapter that the videos don't cover, and it bothers me a little bit to have an incomplete set of videos now.
Hopefully, I'll be able to crank through the 283 content in the next couple weeks so that I can focus a lot of time on the MATH 125. I have some minor tweaks to the MATH 127 course, but the work I did this last semester puts me in a position to know that that will all happen quite quickly. I've got a short list of updates to make and then everything else will just be pushed forward from the previous semester.
There are still a couple other projects floating around. There's the PTG project, which I should be picking up again soon. I needed to do some organization with the laser etcher, as well as run a few experiments with it. (Maybe putting some non-standard items under the laser to see what happens...) There's a lingering video project that I need to do some audio recording for (using spreadsheets to evaluate Riemann sums), and probably another round of video editing (I can't remember if I'm on video 3 of 4, 3 of 5, 4 of 5, or something else). There's also a schedule display program that I want to use with the 3D printers, which also requires a 3D printed case that I need to design (a Raspberry Pi project). So there's a lot to do, as there always seems to be.
Around the house, we're trying to get the living room in a place where we feel comfortable letting Hannah be completely free. This will be a combination of rearranging the furniture, adding some baby gates, and adding/removing items until it's right. In theory, this should also allow us to not need to hover over her quite as much, which would be nice.
At her party, we gave away some seed packets that are "pro-pollinator" (or something like that). I went ahead and put them in the planter box, though I don't expect them to actually survive the summer heat. Or maybe they'll stay dormant until the Fall. Or maybe they might actually thrive. But I'm planning to go back and try again in eary September to give them a fighting chance. Elsehwere in the planter box, I had some basil that was doing quite well, but then there was a failure of the landscaping hardward (an endcap fell off and so there wasn't enough pressure to get water to the drip lines), so the plant decided it was the right time to flower. I decided I would just watch and see what happens. Zero total basil leaves have been harvested from this.
Other stuff: Thor was a bit lonely while we were gone. When we got back home, he stayed in hiding for a while, but once he came out he decided to be super-needy. So at night he's trying to cuddle while Hannah is feeding, and he's been pretty aggressive about getting in our faces so that we would pet him. I haven't done anything with the Hannah height-measuring bar. And since it's summer and I don't really want to spend that much time outdoors, I probably won't work on that until the Fall. Speaking of the garage, there's some work in there that I never really got around to doing, and I don't really intend to do anything with that for now. Speaking of summer... it's summer. It's something like 110 degrees at the hottest part of the day. I might be forgetting something, but it's taken four days to get this far, and I'm not going to delay any further.
