I started at Nevada State in Fall 2007. It's Fall 2025. It's a not-that-complicated word problem.
But Hannah stuff first. She's doing great. Potty training happened, and it was largely successful. We're not one of those families that magically had no accidents, but she's doing well enough that we're just in "avoid accidents" mode and not actually "training" her any more (at least on the basic mechanics... we are still reminding her to check in with her body, and that's a kind of training, but not the same thing). It was kind of a journey, albeit a relatively short one. We did the naked baby approach, wherein you just let the kid walk around naked and try to focus on helping them understand their body cues that they need to pee. And if you get them on the potty on time, it's an immediate win. If you fail, they get to experience peeing on themselves and on the floor and come to the understand that this isn't something they want to do, and so then their brain cues into what's going on around peeing time to try to prevent it from happening again, and that's also a win. The only time pull-ups are allowed is during naps and overnight. (We kind of did a ceremonial "bye-bye" to her last diaper, and she got to throw it away in the diaper garbage.) The target time frame is 3 days where this is all you're doing, and that lays the foundation for them to get it together. I would say it took her about a week to really understand it.
So we rolled up the area rug in the living room and keep her mostly off the carpet for a few days. We also pushed her to drink a lot of water so that she would have a lot of pee, which would theoretically turn into more chances to learn. But that's not quite how it played out. As it turns out, she already had a reasonable level of control on her bladder, and was able to keep it in for quite a while. So while the video instructions we watched indicated that you may be cleaning up pee 10-15 times a day while you're doing this process, we only had one pee every 3-4 hours. And it was a big one. But she quickly figured out what was going on, and had the conceptual picture of what she was supposed to do, and it just took some time for her to let it happen.
There was some poop anxiety that came up, which isn't that surprising because she has had some general difficulties pooping. The cute/sad thing she would say is, "I wanted to pee feeling, not a poop feeling!" We did have a couple of those miss the target, and some of them were caught in the mini-potty while she was standing over it instead of sitting, but she eventually got used to the idea and started sitting.
So that has been the big accomplishment of the last month. Still not perfect, and maybe even regressed in the last week (she knows she needs to go, but pretends she doesn't need to, gets frantic, and then a few minutes later...). But that's how it goes.
She's getting better at counting, and already starting to pick up on letters and their sounds. We were at a restaurant, and while she was sitting in her high chair, she started saying "M for Momma" and "D for Dada." At first, I thought she was just saying those phrases, but then I looked up and saw that the restaurant's name was on the wall behind me ("SCRAMBLED"), and she reacting to those letters. So she might end up being an early reader.
Her use of language is continuing to amuse me. Right now, something she says sometimes is "That is my's" or "That is mine's" (so possessives... but not quite). She's starting to remix songs, where the normal word in the song is intentionally replaced by other words (or sometimes nonsense syllables -- but mostly words). I like the random creativeness of it.
I've noticed that she has been becoming more shy with strangers over the last couple months. She never really went through a stranger-danger phase, so I guess at some level this is kind of a slower-to-develop behavior. She doesn't have a panic or meltdown or anything, but she will come closer to us and maybe hug a leg for a bit while she's figuring out the new person. It could also be that this is just happening more now that we're getting out of the house a bit more frequently again, and it's just giving us more opportunities to see it.
She's definitely in a mommy phase. She's been very clingy with Joan recently. (She's always been somewhat clingy, but it seems to be reaching a new level.) One of the things she's been saying is "I wanted mommy, but I only have daddy!" (Also, sometimes replace mommy and daddy with Joan and Aaron...) I feel bad because I try to help get Joan some space sometimes, and sometimes she refuses and Joan is stuck having to be with her. (Not that being with Hannah is somehow a bad thing, but also being able to have some alone time in the house is important, too.)
Little things: She's enjoying the cooking class that Joan signed her up for. She got a hand-me-down strider bike from a neighbor just a few houses down and is enjoying it a lot. She's starting to show a couple signs of being picky about what she eats (or maybe it's more that she prefers to eat other things and she's holding out for it). We actually didn't swim as much this summer as I thought we were going to, but we might still do some swimming because there's a recreational center that has a heated indoor pool.
Classes are off to a good start. My three sections of MATH 120 are full, which means a lot of grading, but it's at least a low stress course to teach. The content is easy, and the course coordinator has created a solid framework. The MATH 127 class has about 30 students, which is a normal amount for that class. The class itself doesn't have a lot new that's going on in it, but I'm doing some stuff in the background with the API, and I'm getting pretty happy with that.
Speaking of the API, I've started to expand my skills and knowledge in that area (and related areas) by offering up services to a few folks around campus. I feel very confident in my ability to get data from Canvas, and now it's a matter of being able to do things with it. I'm in the middle of learning Flask (and possibly Django) and starting down the LTI route a bit. This has kind of replaced the PTG project because that one is still in data governance limbo.
I don't recall if I've ever mentioned this: A paper that I had tried to publish a while back got resurrected when I passed off the data to some other folks around campus. The topic was basically an analysis of some surveys that I've done with students regarding their attitudes towards mathematics (ATMI... I'm sure I've mentioned that at different points). The work they did (I believe) greatly improved the paper, and we submitted it to a journal. It was rejected, but we think it was really just the wrong journal. So we (well... I, because I was tasked with this responsibility) are going to look at a different set of journals and try again.
The math program is starting into its 10-year review, but I still don't know exactly what that means for us just yet, other than having some more work to do. I feel like there ought to be more work stuff. But I can't think of anything.
The living room continues to get its improvements. Joan has put a lot of time and effort into this, and it shows. We got something for the entry that fits very nicely. At some point over the summer, we got a bunch of storage bins from the container store and got Hannah's stuff a little bit more organized. We had out some people from a window coverings company the other day so that we can look at some samples of things. As with many things with this house, it's a little bit tricky. Part of it is color matching and some of it is style. I don't know if I've mentioned all the random asymmetries that make the space weird, but there are a lot of them.
I was looking forward to building some raised planters this past weekend, but I got side-tracked because the trunk of my car stopped working. It had done this before, but then it started working again. Then it happened again. So this was actually the third time. I took it over to the Big O Tires folks (they've been doing general maintenance stuff on my car for years), but they wanted to charge $220 just for the diagnosis. So I decided to just do it myself. Fortunately, it wasn't complicated. It wasn't a mechanical blockage because the manual release worked (and I crawled into the trunk from the back seat to test that). It wasn't likely a fuse because I was still hearing a click and had no other electrical issues (well... the front passenger window isn't working, but I'm pretty confident that's a different thing). And so it was probably something to do with the latching mechanism. So I opened the trunk, took off the fabric, and started exploring. The piece seemed to require three nuts and a single electrical plug, which was simple enough for me to feel good about replacing it myself. When I called the Ford dealership parts department, the initial price for the piece was $150, but he did some price-matching and brought that down to about $100. I could probably have found an after-market piece for cheaper, but I didn't want to have to worry about whether it fit exactly right, so I went with it. (And I was fortunate that they had one in stock so I didn't have to wait a couple weeks.) Once I got back home, it was less than 30 minutes to finish the job. (I'm not sure that a new window module will be quite as easy, but I'm slightly more inspired to think about trying that at some point.)
Random other things: We had a nice, quiet 4th anniversary of a Japanese restaurant lunch (not AYCE), one of our rare moments together without Hannah. No piano, but yes to some Rubik's Cube. Psoriasis bald spot continues to exist, and I can't really tell if it has changed. Thor is doing well. I feel like this section has gotten really, really short. It feels like there's a lot of little things going on all the time, but when I try to slow down to think about it, very little comes to mind.
