Half year review

OK I admit defeat. My daily blogging exercise lasted about half a year, and was good while it lasted. But since we're now at the halfway point for 2014, I'd like to do some sort of year-so-far-in-review.

Something I did that I've never done before: Tried to milk a goat

Smartest decision made: I don't feel like I did anything unusually smart. but perhaps being realistic about my time constraints and declining to audition for the SM chorus. I needed to simplify my life.

One word that best sums up and describes my experience:

Most happy about completing: My 180+ day Duoligo streak studying Italian.

Biggest risk I took: Auditioned for a game show. Although I eventually chickened out. So maybe I'm not as much as a risk taker as I fancy myself.

Most grateful for: My family is happy and healthy.

Biggest achievement: I feel confident calling myself a singer now.

Wish I've done more of: Exercise

Wish I've done less of: Candy Crush.

What advice I'd give myself 6 months ago: Please exercise better judgement over you tell the kid. She IS still a kid. And sleep more. You're destroying your brain.

Zzzzz.... 

Day 160

Something learned:

I didn't grow up with pets. My parents hated animals, so I never got that dog I wanted. Well, I did have a couple of rabbits, but they were outdoor rabbits, so I never really bonded with them. I remember my best friend's dog dying many years ago, and I was completely mystified as to why. I probably said something insensitive like "you can always get another one."

Thankfully, I understand it a lot better now. I saw in later years how my adult brother got a dog and my mother would watch TV with it. After becoming a parent, I marveled at how a strong emotion could be built seemingly out of nowhere. When a friend lost her cat a few days ago, I was able to explain it to my child in a way that she understood, and also was able to sympathize with the pain of losing an animal.

I don't think being a pet owner is an exact equivalent to parenting, but it's clear to me that the loss of a pet is a deep, authentic pain, and that was a big lesson to me.

Something I'd like to get better at:

Gardening. I've always dreamed of growing fruits and vegetables, but I seem to keep killing the ones I have....

Today I was thankful for:

1. Introducing some family to hot pot and having them love it
2. A kid artist at the chalk festival taking on my kid as an apprentice for a few minutes. She was hooked!
3. A phone call from an aunt who offered some help with something I'd complained about on Facebook
4.Kid having fun with her grandparents' neighbor's kid
5. Great day spent with family

Looking forward to:

My new moringa tree growing nice and strong. I tried hard this time :)

Day 159

Something learned:

As a compliment, I've always felt that "You must be really smart" indicates a fixed mindset -- that my success is due to some inborn traits. I don't agree. I've had my share of failures, and I've seen that my successes were due to willingness to take a chance, accompanied by hard work. I enjoy hearing "Great job" much more, since it also implies that the speaker has observed and is impressed by the quality of the work I've done.

Something I'd like to get better at:

Keeping in touch with people. I think I'm becoming more introverted as the years go by. I often don't actually want to commit to social events. It's hard to maintain friendships that way... even though I want to keep my friends.

Today I was thankful for:

1. Getting the last thing I need to grow a tree on my deck :)
2. Finding a bee rescue company that I can call or recommend next time. I hate the bees dying
3. Kid performing in her magic show despite her earlier fears
4. Getting some good work done while the kid played quietly in my office
5. Lots of good input from friends about potential places to live

Looking forward to:

Wedding anniversary next week!

My challenges of parenting

Parenting is hard, but everyone has different challenges. Over the past couple of years, I've learned about what makes my kid unique, and how best to support those differences. Right now, my biggest challenges with those differences are:

• Overcoming perfectionism - she fears failure so much that she sometimes can't get started at all. She has a hard time attempting something she isn't 100% confident of doing successfully. She is her own worst enemy.
• Teaching grit - when things come easily to her, it's hard to show her the value of practice and perseverance, which will make or break her future endeavors.
• Sensitivities - her sensitivities are extreme, much more so than most kids, because she is capable of such depth of feeling and seeing such a big picture, being mentally mature before her emotional maturity has caught up. I'm constantly on the watch for meltdowns.
• Humility - People hate a braggart, and while they adore sports superstars, they abhor intellectual prowess, she doesn't understand yet why she has to be sensitive to this. I've been sensitized to this myself over my lifetime and it makes me a little sad to have to protect her from this as well. 
• Allowing her to fulfill her potential - it is my responsibility to seek opportunities, to engage, to guide, to advocate. I have no role model for this, and sometimes feel like I'm barely treading water on this.

On why I choose the school I did

Over the past year, when meeting parents of other school-aged children, I usually get asked which school my daughter attends. On finding out that she attends a private school, I usually get asked next "Why did you choose that school?"

That was a difficult question to answer. I was fairly systematic in my approach. I found a large geographical region that was feasible for us to commute to, then listed all the private schools in that area, of which I think there were about 30. We must have visited more than half of these. Eventually, we applied to 9 that I thought were a reasonable fit for our education philosophy. In hindsight, only a handful of those really fit.

After a year of reflection, I think what eventually sold me the most on the school that she currently attends, over all the others, was the fact that every school was evaluating her on whether she met their minimum standards for attending, where as, her school evaluated her on how much she knew and her potential. There is a very big difference.

In the other schools, they were checking to see if she could recreate a block pattern that they showed her. They don't want her to slow the rest of the kindergarten class down by not being able to keep up. They said things like "It doesn't matter whether your child is reading yet when they start school, they all catch up to each other around 3rd grade." How? By neglecting the early readers to focus on the later ones?

In her school, they took her away for a private interview without the parents. When we were allowed to enter, I was stunned to see sheets of paper on the table with extremely detailed drawings, and with a veritable essay written on it in my kid's handwriting.

I didn't want a school that would herd her along and made sure that all the stragglers crossed the finish line. I wanted a school that let their students run at full speed and would race alongside with them.

Day 158

Something learned:

Time vs money.

"Time is money is a common saying" but it has little meaning to a kid with plenty of time and not much way of generating money with it. These days though, I can take my annual salary and divide it by my hours worked and come up with a rough estimate of what my time could be worth.

It helps puts into perspective the choices of what I do with my time. It makes me feel better about farming out some things to other people to buy back some time for myself, because it's actually cheaper to hire someone else than to spend my own time on it.

In the end, though, it's about sanity. I'm still learning how to ensure that I continue to have my own down time, and my kid now too. But I guess the value of downtime is a different lesson.

Something I'd like to get better at:

To be more willing to ask people questions when I don't understand, instead of trying to look it up later in private.

Today I was thankful for:

1. Getting to visit E3 with the husband
2. Playing some fun games at E3
3. Husband taking care of a phone call that neither of us wanted to make
4. Husband taking the kid out to Fry's while I napped
5. Finally tackling a basket of paperwork to file and actually getting most of it done painlessly

Looking forward to:

Kid doing a magic performance on Friday

Day 157

Something learned:

"If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back." ~ Regina Bratt

I have problems, but I'm dealing with them. A sick relative. Difficulty of keeping in touch with distant family and friends. Worrying about achieving dreams before I die. If these are my worst problems, I'm very very thankful.

Something I'd like to get better at:

Finding gifts for people. I know my husband so well, and already I struggle with gifts for him, let alone other people. I just don't seem to know how to find good gifts.

Today I was thankful for:

1. Successfully doing 50 situps this morning
2. My singing coach telling me that I did a good job on Holle Rache.
3. Making it to the kid's camp on time despite traffic
4. Kid playing quietly in my office allowing me to get in 3 hours of work.
5. Husband making dinner since I came home late.

Looking forward to:

Picking up a new hobby after my singing lessons wind down. The world is full of possibilities!