It's a week from the end of February. The last time I tried to start one of these was at the end of December (and I didn't finish before the new year). It's just getting harder to maintain this habit, I guess. Or maybe I'm not prioritizing it. Or maybe both. I used to get kind of an "intellectual constiptation" in the past because I was in the habit of doing this, and when I didn't get to it I kind of felt it in my brain. I would say that it's part of the value of quiet reflection. I miss having the sort of time to just sit for an hour or two and just think backwards on the previous couple weeks. I still get time to reflect, but it's a bit more scattered, and I'm often not at a computer when it's happening.
Hannah is quickly becoming a chatty girl. She has progressed quickly from the simple noun-verb sentences to adjective-noun-verb sentences, and is developing quite the vocabulary. As her language has gotten better, she's also a bit more vocal about what she wants, and so there's a bit more talking back and not backing down. She continues to surprise us with her memory. When I read books to her, I'll often leave off the last one or two words of each line, and she'll be able to fill it in. I sometimes stop at other key words (important nouns or verbs) and she'll often catch it. I have a recording of us "reading" a book called "Baby Bug" from about a month ago where she was doing that. She can also fill in words of the songs we listen to.
She's starting to get a little creative with language, too. Joan sometimes puts random sounds at the end of words (like "daddy-doo"), and Hannah has picked up on the fact that these are thrown in sometimes, and she has started saying things like "mommy-doo" (which is something that neither Joan nor I have said). So she's kind of picking up the meta-patterns in our language. She's also starting to just repeat things she hears, and it's starting to happen while we're out and about. We had an odd moment earlier this month when it seemed that she read the word "love" off of a towel and also part of a package ("two dates" -- part of the contents of an Rx Bar). But when I put the words on a piece of paper, she couldn't read them. So it's far more likely that she's drawing from her memory and at some point in the past we said those things around those objects.
Her 18-month check-up and dental appointments went well. She still gets agitated at the doctor's office when we try to weigh and measure her, and also when the doctor comes in, but she is otherwise doing okay with those visits. I wasn't at the dental appointment, but it appears to have gone well. Joan said that the dentist was worried when she said that she's still breastfeeding, and that there's some correlation between breastfeeding and cavities (though it seems that the data on this is weak at best), but Hannah's teeth are fine.
Hannah was getting to the point that she was able to climb up on the wall of the crib, so bought the conversion kit to make it into a toddler bed that she can crawl in and out of on her own. This has led to a complete reoganization of the master bedroom. We have a baby fence up on about a third of the room to create a large space that contains her crib where she can play independently. She hasn't solved the child-safety mechanism on this fence, so it's the only place where we can put here where she will definitely stay put. The reason for this is that not long after the last post, she figured out how to unlock the baby gates in the other parts of the house. We still have the older gates in the living room and her bedroom, and we still use them. But it's been an effort to try to train her to ask for permission before opening the gates, but she's relatively good at it (far from perfect, but she demonstrates an understanding that she's supposed to stop and ask).
Other notes: In early January, Hannah woke up vomiting, and we all got a stomach bug that hung around for a few days, with everyone vomiting and pooping. The cute/sad thing that sticks out in my mind is the way she said, "No, no, no" right before she vomited. (There's also a very sweet picture in my mind of Joan holding her that first night to comfort her.) When my parents were visited in late January, they showed Hannah a picture of her cousin dancing, and now dancing is kind of a thing that she's into. Her sleep is better overall, I think, but still not able to sleep through the night. We had some initial problems getting her to fall asleep in the crib area, but she's starting to get over those early hurdles and we're back to starting her in the crib and not in our bed.
Work stuff remains in an okay place, but the scramble to keep up is starting to kick in. I have the VIS 115 course completely organized through Spring Break, and I'm probably going to have to put in a bunch of time during Spring Break to make sure I'm able to carry everything through the second half of the semester. The other two courses are going fine with nothing in particular to report.
I had a meeting with some folks about the PTG project, and so now I have a new set of tasks for me to try to figure out. I also tried connecting with our graphic designer, but that ended up being just going in circles. I had reached out directly to them, but it seems that they're being asked to use a particular project management system. So I put it into the system. But then it was rejected. When I followed up to tell them that all I was trying to do was meet with the graphic designer, they told me to reach out to them directly... which is what I did at the beginning. So I'm trapped in a bad system and I'm not sure I'm going to work myself out of it. I could probably use their help, but I'm going to focus on other things for a bit and then maybe try to restart the conversation down the line.
The first Nevada Math contest came and went. We had no participants, but I did get to meet with the former CEO of the organization to understand their systems a bit better. We also had a conversation about things we can do to improve attendance. I need to check in with other faculty and see if any of the ideas seem reasonable to them. I might need to schedule that as a meeting, because I think the email energy may not be there for it.
We had the kitchen/living room/hallway painted. Overall, I think they did about a B+ job. THere are a couple spots where I wish they had taken a little more time to sand down a couple odd lines and one wall where it might have needed to have been primed. They were at a B-, but they did come out (after we had fully paid them) to do touch-up work, and so that improved their grade. I'm not entirely sure if we would use them again (for example, for exterior painting). But that's a conversation for another time.
Thor is doing fine. When we were painting, he ended up outside in the back yard and was having some interactions with a neighbor cat. That was probably the most exciting thing that has happened to him in a while. I did promise to keep him as an indoor pet when I adopted him, and so I'm not particularly interested in trying to convert him to an indoor/outdoor cat.
Other stuff: My parents visited for a couple weeks in late January and early February. During those couple weeks, I think we had hot pot four times. We also went to the Las Vegas Farm. I gave a presentation at UNLV for a STEM conference. We are still trying to make church a regular thing, but it's hard because Hannah is such every few weeks and that messes with things. I can't believe that US politics is aligned with Russia right now. It's a weird start to the new administration. I could fill a rather long post with my thoughts, but I don't have the time or desire to make the time for that.
