Summer is officially over. But the summer heat has yet to dissipate.
Hannah has 6 teeth now, as her next pair of uppers have popped out. We also took her to her first dentist visit. In her usual way, by the time we were seen by the dentist, she had already gotten the entire waiting room of adults to wave to her, and even got a couple of parents who were waiting to start identifying objects that she was pointing at. We've also started "really" brushing her teeth at night. Before, we'd kind of just give her the toothbrush with a tiny amount of toothpaste on it, and she would sort of just jiggle it in her mouth a little and then suck on it. But now we're leaning her back and giving it an actual brushing. It reminds me of doing the mouth-stretches, except that she's much less upset by it. I didn't anticipate that a child would require this much "mouth stuff" but it is what it is.
She's continuing to get more confident with her walking. We specifically went to a Target to allow her to have her first "walking around the store like a big girl" opportunity (it's too hot to walk around outside). She spent a lot of time pointing out the toes of the mannequins and waving "hi" to strangers. I think Joan has taken her back a couple times on her own, and so she's getting a lot of practice. This is also close to the only time that she wears shoes (sandals, actually). She seems to miss going outside, because sometimes she'll just want to sit with the front door open and just look outside.
Her vocabulary continues to grow. She's starting to correctly make basic animal sounds and is slowly moving away from calling all animals a "mao" ("meow"). Her understanding of words is also growing. I can now say "Get the ball" and she knows what item to bring over. Her spatial reasoning is slowly coming along as well, but this one isn't quite as advanced (not that I think she needs to be "advanced" at this point). We've got a shape-hole thing that has a circle, triangle, and square, and she learned to get the circle through the circle hole, but is currently trying to put everything into the circle hole. We also have farm shape-sorting puzzle, and it's still too hard for her. Some internet sources indicate that this typically develops at 18 months, so there's plenty of time.
Swim lessons continue to go well. It seems like they think she's getting ready to move up past the first level, but I don't actually know what metrics they are using for that. (I don't think they have a "formal" test or anything at this level, so it's probably an estimation of how comfortable the child is with the various activities.) We're currently going to a Water Wings, but it's 3-4 times as expensive as getting lessons at the multigen center. Joan has been on top of watching for the sign-up periods for that, and I think we're going to have a couple months at the multigen coming up in a bit.
She's bouncing back and forth between one and two naps now. And she's starting to show progress in her nighttime sleeping. She's going to sleep pretty well. I'm able to put her in the crib and do a nighttime ritual, and she understands to wind herself down. There's sometimes a little protest or delay tactics (asking for water, but then refusing the water when I bring it to her). I still stay in the room until she's asleep, but that will probably change at some point. I think both Joan and I enjoy the contact naps too much to try to force her to nap in the crib, but since she's going to bed well at night, it doesn't feel "necessary" for us to force her to do that. (Also, the days are numbered for these baby naps.)
Now that I'm going back to work full time, we're going to have to start considering daycare. Joan still wants to spend the majority of her time with her, but she does work remotely something just short of half-time. We don't know what this will look like just yet, and we'll start to get a better feel for what the needs really look like as we launch into the semester. Hannah did have her first baby-sitter experience (a few hours), which was the longest time she's been away from both of us since she left the NICU.
Other Hannah stuff: We're still working our way through the allergens. I think the next ones are things like soy and seafoods, and maybe some other tree nut. She's a very, very good eater, to the point that we need to cut her off sometimes so she doesn't give herself a stomachache (or difficult bowel movements). We're also doing a better job of getting her more variety in her meals, and I'm hoping to continue to expand that. I'm looking forward to her having "composed" food items instead of just ingredients. (At this point, "composed" just means things that are intentionally cooked together.)
Classes start next week, and this week has been busy with meetings and such. All four of my classes met the enrollment requirement, so everything on that front is in the clear. My classes are fully-prepped and all my notes are printed up and everything, so I'm ready for Monday. I didn't get nearly as far on my projects as I had wanted this summer. Last summer, my excuse was that Hannah was just born. This summer, my excuse is that Hannah is one. I suspect my excuse next summer will be that Hannah is two. Part of me feels bad because I'm used to being able to take on more stuff. But also, I don't feel bad because it's good to spend time at home with Hannah. So I'm either going to have to change my expectations or learn to work more efficiently.
I've spent a lot of the last month trying to learn some .NET for the PTG project. It's going a little more slowly than I want, but also a lot faster than I was worried it might be. I've been able to create a couple basic protypes of the type of dashboard that I'm hoping to make, and the current challenge is trying to reconcile the .NET Framework 4.6 code with the .NET Core 8.0 that I think I'm going to try to complete the project in. There's some Active Directory stuff that I'm having to work out along the way, which is something I wasn't exactly prepared for. But we'll see how it goes.
I'm needing to put some more time into the MATH 125 online textbook project. There was no way that it was going to be ready for the class this semester, but I had hoped to have a bit more of it put together by now. So I'm going to try to set aside some dedicated time each week to make progress on that. In the same vein, I really need to start putting that VIS 115 course together for next semester. I don't think there's going to be anything completely novel in that course, so it's mostly a matter of pulling things together. I've got more and more of an outline fleshed out and project ideas in the back of my mind. It just needs to get down on paper and organized into something I can actually teach from.
My tenosynovitis is mostly gone at this point. If I do the thumb test, I can still feel it. But I rarely experience it in any of my day-to-day activities. Instead, I have minor lower back pain that I got from trying to nudge the washer/dryer a couple inches to be closer to the corner*. I felt my back tweak when it happened, too. I tried to rest it stretch it, but after about a week and half decided to go to a franchise chiropractic place to get it adjusted. That experience was interesting because when I got there, it was completely empty except for the chiropractor sitting at the front desk. And he started off asking me why I would come to a place like this instead of a place with a chiropractor's name on the door, and that places like this hire guys that have just graduated and don't have a lot of experience. I told him I wasn't looking for a long-term relationship and just needed some very basic care, and he smiled and told me that I'm in the right type of place. As it turns out, he was a retired chiropractor (just a couple years into retirement) who knows a guy who owns a bunch of locations within the franchise, and his friend wanted him to "babysit" the location and get its doors open after being closed for a while. I asked him if his friend knew that he was potentially driving away business, and his response was "He knows who I am." So we chatted a bit, I got my adjustment (I really just needed that *pop* in the lower back), and that was the end of that. It still took several more days to get back to almost 100%, but that's to be expected.
* About the washer/dryer: It's an LG Washtower from Costco and weighs something like 325 pounds. I didn't realize it was that heavy until I looked it up later. It's pretty nice, and Hannah likes to dance when she hears the chimes play. The old washer had no audio indicator when it finished and the old dryer had a literal buzzer, and so that's definitely an improvement. The stacked setup also creates some floor space that we're going to use to rearrange some stuff. We'll probably end up with some sort of table and then put the cat litter undernath that instead of in the front bathroom. So that's something for me to work on when I can.
Joan is starting to think earnestly about redocrating the interior. She's been putting a lot of time and effort into trying to think it through carefully, including taking a class on paint colors. All of this is about 100 times more work than what I would do, and I'm glad that she's doing it. My contribution is more on the practical side of things, thinking about spatial dimensions of things (measuring out the size of the couch to show how it fits/doesn't fit into the space, and things like that). She's been wanting to do stuff for a while, and maybe this Fall we'll be ready to dive in.
Miscellaneous things: I still need to weigh Thor. I think I just need to pull the scale out into the living room for a bit and then scoop him up for a brief moment and do the difference of weights method to figure it out. He seems generally healthy, so I'm not too concerned. I want to get back to playing the piano, but I feel as though I have neither the time nor the energy. But I should do the thing, just in case. This summer, I became a small numbers of degrees of separation from Olympic medals (yes, plural -- and one of those is a connection I only learned about recently). Our third anniversary is coming up. The time goes quickly, and it also goes well.
