On March 6, the temperature was 64 degrees according to Accuweather. One week later, it was 84 degrees. Then a week after that, it was 97 degrees. We're projected to reach triple digits this coming week. Fun.
Hannah continues to play with language. She likes to shorten words. For example, "bubbles" is "bubs." And she's still just making up words. She also brought back "geedle" which is a word that she was using maybe 6-9 months ago. It's a word that kind replaces laughing, so she would say "geedle-geedle-geedle" in situations where she might otherwise be laughing. Unfortunately, I don't remember where the word came from. My best guess is that it was a butchering of "giggle" (like maybe I was playing with her, she started giggling, and then I started saying "giggle-giggle"). She's also announcing her actions. For example, if she's upset and feels like throwing something, she'll announce "THROW!" when she throws it. She does things like that in more playful contexts, like "TAKE!", "REACH!", or "PUSH!"
Towards the beginning of the month, she started to run a fever, which turned out to be RSV. The good news is that RSV risk in children tapers off starting around 6 months (for children without chronic conditions, and then ramps back up for people 65 and older), but it's basically just a common cold for children of Hannah's age. She had several days of a fever (but was otherwise fine). After her fever came down, she developed a bilateral ear infection. Due to her Amoxicilin reaction, she's been on a non-penicillin antibiotic (clindamycin), and everything seems to be going fine. She will be finishing her treatment soon and then have a follow-up.
Her TV interests continue to expand. It used to be Daniel Tiger, then it was Curious George, but now it's "If you give a Mouse a Cookie" (the Amazon series based off the book). There has also been some Pete the Cat, but that one didn't really seem to stick. But it's not quite as single-minded as it used to be in that she's more open to switching shows and doesn't only demand just one thing all the time. The same goes for her imagination play, which will sometimes reflect Curious George (the house is the "Lobby" and she is the "Doorman" or the "Man with the Yellow Hat"), but sometimes is Mouse (calling me "Moose" for example) and she still sings Daniel Tiger songs (both in appropriate contexts and randomly).
She's well into a phase where not getting her way is resulting in a bit of a meltdown. It's not a total meltdown where she's completely lost control of herself, but not getting her way is being met more and more frequently by anger or frustration and tears. It's usually unimportant things, too. On the one hand, because the stakes are low, it's not that hard to just give in. On the other hand, that sets a not-so-good precendent for her to get her way. So I'm sometimes finding myself in this weird battle where I'm holding a line because I said "no", and not because I care. Yes, there are some techniques, like offering alternative solutions and distraction, affirming the calm-down, validating emotions, and things like that. But it's a process. (Although the other night, she was unhappy about something and started crying, then started laughing and said, "I have tears!" It's almost like she surprised herself, and then everything was fine. So I don't really know what's actually going on inside of her head. Human brain development is weird sometimes, I guess.)
She is also learning the "we are not equals" lesson. The other day, she was putting a piece of silicone in her mouth (off of a set of tongs that she uses as a toy). I told her not to do it multiple times, and then told her I would take it away from her if she did it again. So she did it again, and I took it away from her. Her response was to lecture me about how it's not nice to take things from other people. Or maybe she's learning cause and effect, or consequences, or something. Again, I don't really know what's actually going on inside her head.
Other Hannah Stuff: She's just over 3 feet tall now and 30 pounds, which looks to be very average according to that CDC growth chart. She's been getting a lot of "big bed" time because she's been sick, but we really are trying to get her to stay in her own bed for the night (and eventually move her to her own room). We gave away her unused diapers and pullups to a friend, which kind of officially marks the closing of that phase of her life (even though she really hasn't needed them for the last six-ish months).
Work stuff continues to go well. The CTLE vision project is about a month from wrapping up (as of the date that I'm typing this, which may not be the day it gets posted). The final document may end up being around 50-60 pages in length, as I'm trying to document and explain things as carefully as I can because there are some particularly complex pieces that are in play. The good news is that a lot of the writing has been done as I've been going through the process, so I have a draft for maybe about the first 30-40 pages (most of which is the research part).
My two classes are going well. The 3D printing course has moved on to the projects stage, which is both more interesting and easier to grade. After spending the first 10 weeks of the course trying to direct them so that they learn the particular skills they need to develop, this is now the time for me to step back and let them make what they want to make. It's not entirely free-form, as I do have specific conditions on the things that they are making, but it's still mostly a blank slate for them.
I also got a third 3D printer working, which is nice. It was donated by another faculty who had some printing issues, but it turned out to be just a $10 part that needed replacing. The printer is at least 7 years old at this point and they are less interested in it as a hobby, so there's no hard feelings about it being an easy fix. There are still a couple more printers that are not functioning that I want to play with at some point in the future (meaning it's probably not going to happen). Those machines are older, and they only get older with time. The positive side of that is that I can accidentally break it and not feel bad. The negative side of that is that the value of fixing it up in the first place is very low.
The physics course is also easing up a bit. For the last couple weeks of the semester, they do a video project, which makes things easy for me. And the weeks before that they are playing with Arduinos and doing some digital/analog electronics, which I like a lot. So I'm expecting that to go smoothly.
I've got a couple more math videos scripted out and have started doing the animations for it, but I don't anticipate that it will be ready to go before summer. That the kind of work that I really want to do, but it's always low on my list of priorities because it just doesn't have a huge impact on my general work life. If I don't make videos, there are only very minor consequenecs (failing to meet a goal in my annual review). I do watch the analytics, which is kind of fun. For example, I can see spikes in viewership of certain videos that happen to be in order by section (Section 5.1 spikes, then Section 5.2, and so forth), so there are students out whose instructors are forcing them to hear me talk math. I'm a long way away from turning that into pennies of revenue, so I just get to enjoy the minor dopamine hit from it.
STuff around the house quietly moves forward. I've been trying to clear out some weeds, but because the temperature shot up so quickly some of the weeds have dried out before I could get to them, which makes them much more annoying to deal with. The result of this is that there's kind of a clear line in the back yard that shows where I stopped pulling the weeds. The garden itself was finally harvested. It was honestly a bit underwhelming, but for the amount of effort that actually went in to taking care of that garden, it wasn't too bad. I have changed up the watering system to try to get a better distribution of water in the bed, and I think that sort of playing around is the actual win for me, and the fresh vegetables or herbs are kind of secondary (at least for me). Hannah likes to go in the back yard and pretend to plant stuff and dump water on the plants, which is more than enough of a win for her. (The flowers in the bed next to the vegetables are still hanging on, which is kind of nice. The only thin that's taking care of them is the timed watering system, but I guess that's been enough.)
I'm going to wrap this up because if I do I can finish this before April. I'm not sure I'll find time in the next few days. Little things: Thor is vomiting a bit more frequently than usual (usual has been once every few months). I got him a feeding bowl to help him slow down when he eats, and we'll see if that's what's going on. I can't believe we've been at war in Iran for almost a month already. No piano playing, but Hannah was watching me scroll facebook and recognized sheet music as music so I'm feeling good about her exposure. She's been watching ballet things on TV, so she's also getting exposure there, too. The household is finally almost well after being sick for about 3 weeks. There's always more that I could say, but I'm done for this one.
