Recap: January and February 2019

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue my monthly recaps, since they aren’t always that exciting, but I do enjoy having these recaps to look back on. (They’re especially helpful every time I write my year in review.) Instead of forcing myself to recap monthly, I thought I’d try bimonthly and also a different format!

Highlights

• We had some cold and rainy days, but fortunately, the Pokemon Go community days and special events fell on days with decent weather. We met up with friends several times at a large shopping center for lunch, Pokemoning, and walking around with the baby.
• Talia celebrated her first Chinese New Year with my parents and got her first red envelopes!
• I organized our company’s quarterly hackathon with another manager at work. I’ve participated many times in the past, but it was my first time organizing it!
• I started off the year uninspired by my toy photography. I normally take photos of Nendoroids, but I mixed it up a little by taking photos of a friend’s LEGO sets and a few non-Nendoroid figures. That definitely gave me the spark of inspiration I needed, so I hope to do more outside of Nendoroids!

Talia’s Milestones

I also want to document Talia’s milestones because it’s fascinating to me to see Talia develop new skills bit by bit.

At 1 month old, Talia started to show real smiles, coo a bit, and her vision noticeably improved. At 2 months, she began to be really vocal and could support her head better. At 3 months, we got a lot of laughter, and she was starting to grab things with her hands. At 4 months, she could roll over.

Now that brings us to January and February! We started Talia on her first solid foods, so January was baby rice cereal and baby oatmeal, plus her first peanut butter to introduce peanuts early. She also hit a few major milestones! We saw her having more control of her hands and arms and actually reaching out for things, one of which are her feet. She also began being able to sit unassisted!

In February, we moved onto feeding her pureed vegetables. She enjoyed sweet orange vegetables like squash, carrots, and sweet potato, and well… tolerated green ones like broccoli and avocado. Her balance while sitting and the articulation of her hands and arms continue to improve. I love watching her sit, look at her toys, and then pick which one she wants to lean forward to grab.

Yearly Progress

In the beginning of the year, I chose 3 areas to focus on throughout the year. I want to get into the habit of checking in on them to see how I’m doing.

• Continue decluttering and simplifying my life – As you saw in my previous entry, I really got into the KonMari method of tidying. I’m still doing it, so expect more entries on my progress later! I’ve finished clothing and books, and am almost done with papers.
• Get my finances in order – My husband and I determined our monthly average spend, and while we still save money every month, the spending was more than we’d like. Most of it was on food – Blue Apron and eating out. Now I’m back into the habit of bringing my lunch to work, my husband cooks dinner almost every day, and we don’t do Blue Apron every week anymore.
• Sharpen my job knowledge – Not only did I organize our company’s hackathon, but I also participated in it! I used the opportunity to learn a new Javascript framework, Vue JS, and wrote a Japanese Mahjong Scorer with two of my coworkers.

Lessons Learned

Back in June, I randomly ran into an old high school friend. We did the usual pleasantries of saying how we haven’t seen in each other in a while and how we should get together some time to catch up. I’m sure you all have had this interaction before, and how most of the time, neither side reaches out to meet up afterwards. Unfortunately, we never met up, and in January, he suddenly passed away. I missed my chance to hang out with him one last time.

At his funeral, I saw other high school friends I had lost contact with. We were still on friendly terms and friended on social media; we just haven’t seen or talked to each other in over 10 years. Through our awkward small talk, I’ve realized that we’re too far disconnected now. We weren’t a part of each others’ lives anymore, and you know what? That’s ok.

It really put things in perspective for me, and I thought back on all the times I thought about catching up with someone. I also accepted that I didn’t want nor need to catch up with everyone. Sometimes we fall out of other people’s lives because life just happens, and that’s ok too. And so, the past month, I met up with 5 former coworkers, and I have more friends I haven’t seen in a while that I plan on reaching out to.

Up Next

March is my birthday month! So far, my only plans are to take a staycation and to meet up with my coworkers to work on our hackathon project more. I hope everyone is doing well!