Well, I completely missed the month of April. Oh well. I'll do my best to recap. I'm also going to try to get in the habit of including dates as I type
We're just over a month away from Hannah's third birthday, and given the frequency of these posts, the next time I post might be after it. We're heading back to Wigglin' Out, just like last year. We thought about a more active play space, but she's not quite big enough for that (and some of the friends in the group are a little younger), so we just chose the same one. It's a little bit tricky for us because our place really isn't quite big enough to host more than a few kids and it's too hot to do something outdoors in June. So for at least the foreseeable future, we're going to have to get one of these spaces for her parties. But Hannah likes it there, so it's not even a bad thing for now.
She's reaching the point where she can start to help with small parts of chores. For example, when folding the laundry, I can tell her "put this sock in dada's drawer" and she will succeed most of the time. (Sometimes she gets distracted, and sometimes she doesn't want to help.) I can also send her to get a number of hangers from the closet, and she is starting to get better at bringing back the right number. It seems like she understands the idea of counting, because she can point and count. But left to her own, it's kind of like she's too lazy to count and just kind of guesses. Because if she brings the wrong number, I can ask her to count them and she will be (mostly) successful. (Sometimes, when she's moving the hangers around as she's counting, they hook together and she doesn't seem to recognize it.)
In a similar vein, she's identifying her capital letters down pretty well. We're not doing sight words or anything like that, but she is starting to do the phonics thing with connecting letters and sounds. There was a cute/sad moment the other night related to reading. I was reading to her for a bit and then got up to brush my teeth. She didn't really want me to leave, but I gave her a book that I know she has memorized and told her, "You can read this to your stuffie." Then her eyes started welling up and she said, "But dada... I can't read!" So I hugged her and calmed her down, then said, "You can pretend read this to your stuffie." And then everything was fine.
She's continuing to learn defiance. One time, Joan asked her to get her water bottle before they got in the car, and her response was, "No. That's *your* job." Yeah... She's also less responsive to timers to cue her as the time to change activities. She'll ask for another timer and another timer, and eventually just gets stuck on, "But I'm not done yet." In the same sort of area, she's also doing things she's not supposed to do and then justifying herself with "But I was just..." So she's no longer stopping when we ask her to stop.
On the more positive side of things, she's continuing to grow in her confidence and curiosity. She's starting to do the "Why? Why? Why?" type of questioning sometimes, and she's interested in exploring new things that she hasn't seen or done before. She doesn't always follow through and get scared (particularly climbing on play structures), but she's happy enough to take those first couple steps. She also has a little bit of shyness that comes out when adults talk to her. (She will say something like, "It's okay to be a little shy when you meet someone new" even if it's someone she already knows. And that language comes from Joan, who does a lot of this type of coaching with her. So she's probably going to be very emotionally aware as she keeps growing up.)
We also had an urgent care visit. Hannah is now one of those kids that shoved something up their nose. The objects were pumpkin seeds. Joan was able to get some of them out, but one was stuck high enough in there that it couldn't be pulled out. We learned from the urgent care doctor that there's a technique called "Mother's Kiss" (or "Parent's Kiss") that might have worked, though it works better with round objects like beads that block more of the nasal cavity. The idea is to blow into their mouth like you were doing CPR, but only block the opposite nostril. That way, the air blows up and out to try to force the object out from behind. It's completely logical, but I'm amused at thinking about the first person who tried it, and how long they had thought about doing it before having a chance to try it. Anyway, it didn't take very long for the doctor to pull it out with forceps and there's no injury or anything. So that's all good.
We had a little bit of an adventure today (5/2). We had wanted to take her to the pool for her first swim of the year. So we went out to the Heritage Aquatic Center (which has the warmest and most comfortable pool), but they were closed for training (and this was not posted on the list of closures for the pool). Then we went to the Multigen and the same thing happened (also not posted). And when we were there, there were two other families that had just arrived to go swimming, too, so it's not like we missed something super obvious. So we had to have a little conversation with Hannah about being disappointed, and let her choose between going to 85 Degrees to get a treat or going to a splash pad. She chose 85 Degrees, but wanted to go in her bathing suit. So we did and just had some nice little snacks there. So our first swim of the season will maybe happen in the next couple weeks instead.
Other Hannah things: I've gotten her to accept the idea that some things are "temporary" (band-aids, balloons, etc.), which has made it easier for her to accept when those things go away. She's on a huge Danny Go! kick these last couple months. I'm saying "Use words" a lot to get her to describe things instead of saying "that" all the time. She's not sleeping in her own bed very often right now, but we are trying to move her in that direction. "Actually" somehow made it's way into her vocabulary (as in, starting a sentence with "Actually..."). I don't know where that came from.
Work stuff has just chugged along. The CTLE project is mostly wrapped up. I submitted the final document to the Provost last week, and I've got a meeting tomorrow (5/3) to address questions or concerns that she has. Tomorrow has since turned into a couple days ago (it's 5/5 as I type this), and the document has already been distributed to faculty. It's a hefty 70 pages in length (including 20 pages of appendices), with lots of footnotes and data. I don't really expect to hear too much from people about their thoughts for a while. This is the last week of the semester and nobody really has time to digest all of the information. I think the reception to the ideas will become far more apparent as we start to move into the Fall semester, after the new Director has had a chance to think about it and strategize a bit about what to do with the information and ideas that were in there. It was quite an interesting project to be in charge of, and I'm glad that I did it. And I'm also glad that it's done so I can move on.
I'm feeling pretty good about the VIS 115 (Physics for Media Arts) final projects. One group is making a hydraulic claw game, another group is doing something with colors and the "Pepper's Ghost" illusion (an angled glass that reflects an image so that it makes a ghostly appearance, like in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland), and the other two groups both did different types of water rockets. We'll see how their presentations go tomorrow (5/6).
One of my projects for that course is to add to the resources in the Arduino section. It didn't go quite as smoothly as I had hoped. I may try to make it a little more plug-and-play (with regards to the coding), and do more with wiring diagrams. I also want to build a project box for the Arduino kits to live in. Right now, the components live in plastic bags inside of a plastic takeout container, and it would be good to have things spread out a bit more so that students can see where everything is at. I may have to figure out some sort of flexible modular system with the laser cutter to allow for upgrades/changes in the future. That's one that will have to marinate for a bit.
The ART 240 (3D Printing) class is basically done. I just have a bit of grading to do to close out the week (I told them they had to turn things in by noon on Friday). So that's going to be a slow trickle of work for the rest of the week.
I did a bunch of work on ADA accessibility in LaTeX, which was going to be an issue in late April but turned into an issue for April 2027. The reason that I took the time to do that is because I have to build my Applied Statistics course from scratch, so I might as try to get this part of it right. It turns out that (at least so far) the fix is relatively simple. Change some stuff in the preamble and add some alt text to images, and that seems to meet the bare minimum requirements. I also looked into HTML output (because in many ways it seems more natural to do it that way with the current state of LaTeX accessibility), and so I'm going to try doing both for now and see how it goes. I'll probably end up writing a Python script to help with processing the documents.
The math competition is done for the year, and we're going to do it for at least one more year. One of the big challenges for me in the upcoming year is to leverage parent volunteers to help with the day-of activities. The faculty (including myself) are a little tired of having to be there every event. So we're going to try to figure out a rotation schedule that will help us keep things running but require less of us. In my mind, faculty will still do all of the handling of answer sheets, and we really just need to have some adults in the room to help keep things running smoothly. I think we can do it. Otherwise, we're going to have a bit of a struggle next year.
And that's all of the school stuff that I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more, because there's always something I'm leaving off.
Since I missed posting during my entire birthday month, there's a bit of catching up to do with that. On my actual birthday, Joan picked a Mexican place that we had never been to before called Hussong’s Mexican Cantina. It was fun to try something different. I guess it's a local chain with three locations. The history they post is a little odd. It says "Est. 1892" but it's very vague on how the original place that opened in Mexico ends up as a three restaurant chain in Las Vegas in 2026. They also claim to be the home of the original margarita, but lots of places claim that. So I don't know. Anyway, Joan picked a good spot as the food was good, and I got a somebrero and a firework fountain in a slice of tres leches cake for dessert (for free). It was an excellent casual way to celebrate the day.
The next week, we went out to Texas de Brazil (Brazillian BBQ) with friends to celebrate my birthday again. Of course, I would definitely do that again. But that's also the sort of thing that should be reserved for a special occassion (unlike AYCE sushi, which is good any time it fits the budget). Afterwards, we went for a walk around Town Square (a great suggestion by Joan), and Hannah played around in the open grassy area and play area a bit, while the adults just kind of hung out a bit.
Joan's mom was in town for a weekend, and we got to do some new things. Joan found this place called Horses for Heroes, which is a ranch out in Centennial Hills. They have an interesting mission, serving children of military folks and also doing some mental health stuff for veterans and others. We were there on a kind of open house type of event, where you could just wander around to different parts of the ranch. Hannah brushed a miniature horse and then went for her first horse ride. There was also a petting area with goats and some other things (including an unnecessarily dangerous slide).
Joan also found out that there was an art thing at the Summerlin library. Hannah was really interested in the Lego ball machine and making a Lego bouquet of flowers. There was also a shadow puppet show (another Hannah first). The show was the Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Hannah will now sometimes talk about the troll (or troll puppet) at random times. So it left some sort of impression on her. And then Hannah got her arm painted by the face painting artist. The event was actually billed as a chalk art festival, but the chalk art was just kind of meh. Just nothing memorable about it.
We also went to Springs Preserve that weekend, which was the second time we were there that month. We had gone a few weekends earlier with some other parents for the opening day of the butterly habitat. It's always nice to go there when the weather is nice.
Easter was also in April, and we visited a Methodist church that day. We have a nice picture of Hannah putting flowers on the cross and a family picture in front of it. We didn't really get a sense of the church because we spent the whole time in the cry room with Hannah and the other family that was in there. (Hannah wasn't crying, but she was too active to sit in the service with us.) My understanding is that they don't have a children's program, but maybe that was just for the day. I don't know. I don't know that we have any intention on going back there at this time.
The church search is still an ongoing project. Hannah is getting older and has shown that she can do well away from us for the hour. But we still end up being out for 2-3 weeks at a time when she gets sick, and that just throws the whole rhythm and routine off. So we're still drifting around through different churches. We're going to land somewhere at some point. We're still not in any hurry to do so, but we do think it would be good for Hannah to start to feel that type of routine. It's just a matter of finding something and settling in.
This has gotten very long. I should wrap up. Little things: Thor had been vomiting a bit more than usual, but then I got him a food tray that helps him to slow down when he eats, and that has been less of an issue. I did get a tiny bit of piano time, but it was split with Hannah, so I don't know how much it counts. She hasn't shown much interest in the piano, but every now and then she likes to play around a bit. I tried to teach her about middle C. I don't know if she would be able to find it on her own (but with her memory... I wouldn't be surprised). Joan and I are starting to think about what to do this summer. We tried to go for our first family swim of the summer, but we happened to pick the day that all the pools were closed for some sort of training (which didn't get posted on the internet, so we couldn't have known). As always, there's much more going on that what gets written up. But this is 20-something paragraphs worth of writing, so I'm done.
