Another year, another trip around the sun.
We went to two different New Years Eve parties for Hannah. One was held at a park with a balloon drop at noon. The other was held at someone's house, and they ran video of the 2025 countdown at some point in the evening and did confetti flung from cups taped to a ceiling fan. Both involved people in the parent group that Joan is connected to, and it's nice that she's put the work in to cultivate those connections so that Hannah can enjoy these types of experiences.
We've noticed that Hannah is sounding her "r"s with a "oy" sound, so that more sounds like "moy." This is apparenty very normal at her age, according to whatever random internet sites I've seen. It's not that she can't make the r sound, because she can go "arrrrrr" if we have her slow it down, so I don't think there's reason to think there's something physically wrong. And it's kind of turned into a little joke that we have, because we'll say back words to her with the "oy" sound and she'll laugh at it, and then also laugh at herself when she hears herself saying it with the "oy" sound. So it's clear that she can hear the difference, and so there's no rush to get a speech pathologist or anything like that (at least for now).
It's getting harder for me to identify her development at this point. It's not that she's stopped growing and learning, but the developmental milestones are just not as pronounced as earlier. When she was learning to speak, there was a clear sense of progression from babble sounds to single words to multiple words and sentences. But now the developmental milestones are more nuanced. She has been using a fork or spoon for a while, and it still leads to messes, but the messes aren't as messy as they used to be. We're still cleaning up piles of food under her chair, but maybe it's only 10% of the food instead of 25% of it. Her use of language is more complex and her awareness of her emotions is growing (for example, she might talk about feeling shy when we're on our way to a social activity). But there are also large gaps, such as her being unable to correctly identify what we did on a given day (for example, if we ask her "What did you do today?" she will sometimes talk about things that happened in the much further past).
There are also things like her physical coordination that are growing but in ways for which there are fewer markers. I guess the obvious one is that she's starting to climb ladders and things at the playground, but from there it's all kind of murky. She has more balance and coordination when it comes to running and jumping (dancing), but it's not like she wasn't able to do those things before. It's just that they're less awkward and more confident now.
We're starting to try to work her back towards sleeping in her own bed and eventually (not-too-distant-future, we hope) into her own room. We all got sick in November and early December, and that led to us all sleeping in the "big bed" and it's just been hard to get her to go back. We're also trying to shift her bedtime earlier (she's going to be at 9 or sometimes even later and we're trying to make that more like 8), but I don't know how well we'll stick to that. In the last few nights, I've been sitting with her by her crib 45-60 minutes as she entertains herself in the dark. There are books that she has memorized and we just talk through them as if we're reading them, sometimes even opening the book in the dark and pretending to read the words (there's just enough light from a night light to make out a rough picture, but it's far too dark to actually see the words). We'll all get there, eventually.
Other Hannah things: She's still talking about skulls and skeletons. So I started saying "frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital" and pointing to different parts of her head. She probably has no clue what I'm talking about, but she's able to recite that back. I've also started naming other bones (some of which I've had to double check on the internet because it's been a LONG time), so we'll see if she just keeps memorizing them. (Yes, I'm *that* parent who might have *that* kid.) Her art is still mostly scribbles. Daniel Tiger has become the language of how we talk about almost everything, but she's starting to branch out to Sesame Street (both of which are available through the PBS Kids App on the TV). I like that she's getting into Sesame Street because it gives her more exposure to letters, numbers, and those more "academic" ideas, as opposed to Daniel Tiger's focus on social interactions.
There's not a lot of work stuff to talk about. The one change is that I talked with the Acting Provost, and she asked me if I would be willing to change my data-centric course release for something that's more like a consultant role for one of the groups on campus. I had to take a few days to really think about it because it's so different from the things that I was thinking about. It's kind of an interesting time around campus because of all sorts of leadership transitions (both the President and Provost have moved on, and also a number of other senior leaders), so stepping into a leadership-like position to bring some stability (instead of them bringing in someone from the outside) is a rare opportunity that I'm glad to have a chance to be a part of. I have a meeting scheduled to get into some of the details of what exactly is about to happen in a couple weeks.
Aside from that, my main task to complete in the next couple weeks is to finish the course prep for my physics course. I've got a number of changes planned, including updating the labs to be more directive and less open-ended (students kind of struggled with that). I also want to do a few weeks on Arduinos and electronics this semester. I also want to change out the spaghetti bridge idea for cardboard bridges. There are a few other changes, and I just need to sit down for a little bit and flesh that all out.
This Christmas was spent in Vegas, which might be the start of some traditions. Joan's family used to gather in the Bay Area because the "focus" (so to speak) was the matriarch of the family, who was too old to travel. But she passed away this last year, and that opened the door for a new set of opportunities. So for Joan's immediate family, it meant that this year they all came out to Vegas for a few days. We had rain this year, so we spent a lot of time around the house. We did a 1000 piece puzzle, which echoed the puzzle that we did the first Chirstmas that we all spent together.
I also got to do some more interesting foodstuffs, which I haven't been able to do in a while. On Christmas Eve, I made a brisket, butternut squash soup, and roasted brussel sprouts. Then for Christmas, we did a hot pot dinner.
On Christmas morning, we did a wrapping paper wall for Hannah to bust through to get to the living room. And then we slowly did presents, and Hannah was really interested in passing out the gifts. Once again, we're flush with lots of stuff for Hannah, which is fine. We probably need to do a little purge of stuff at some point in the near future. I don't know when that would happen, nor do I have a lot of intuition as to what stuff will end up going. But that's for the future to figure out.
The drapes are up, and they look good. There's a little bit of finish work for me to do, but it's basically done at at this point. I think the next step for the room (now that the Christmas decorations are gone) is to finish adding something so that the walls don't look so barren. It seems like we're moving towards photos for that.
The plants in the garden are mostly doing okay. After visitng the Springs Preserve again, I saw that they do a grid-like thing with just hose, and that looks like a more efficient way to go than these drip/spray heads that I'm currently using. I don't know when I'll build that, but it doesn't seem like it should be that big of a task. I think we should be harvesting something in the next month or so.
I guess I should wrap this up. Thor seems to have increased in his general confidence when people are over, as he came out to see a lot of the people who visited in the last couple months. Piano playing has once again disappeared. I'm generally feeling less behind on everything, and I still doon't think I'm ahead on anything. So much is weird in US politics right now that I don't even know where I would want to begin if I were going get into it. Still church shopping. I really hope to have the garage cleaned up or reorganized by Spring.
