Month: March 2018

Monthly Checkup: March 2018

Based on my WordPress blog history, i am most active with planning and reflecting during the month of March. I think this is because of my upcoming birthday.

So i thought of taking as advantage of this and start my monthly checkpoints.

I modified the checkpoint from http://meaningring.com/2016/08/23/monthly-checkpoint-by-todd-henry/.

Work Focus

Challenges: What are the biggest challenges you faced this month?

Top 3: What are your Top 3 areas of focus for the month?

  1. Defect management
  2. Responding to issues with interfaces
  3. Dealing with difficult people in the team

Relationships

How would you rate yourself in terms of relationships this month?

As a wife: Poor. Need to plan more solo time with my husband. Maybe look for a nanny who can watch her for 2 hours to have a date with husband for at least a few hours. Watch a movie or something.

As a mother: Very Good. I think I havr spent more than enough time with my daughter, I give her baths and put her to sleep.

As a daughter: Bad. Haven’t spoken to parents for 2 months. They are just not reachable. 😦

As a sister: Good. Talked to my borthers and sister.

As an aunt: Good.

As a friend: Poor. Don’t really know if I have someone I could consider a friend here in Texas. I mean I have a few acquaintances, work friends… but not really someone I could share my innermost thoughts and feelings with. Well, aside from my husband, of course. Just miss having a close girl friend I can pour my heart into.

Energy

Whole-Life Planning: For now, the life plan is just to stay afloat and enjoy life more. The past years I have been busy with so many milestones. I feel like now is the time to enjoy those milestones and to stay on top of them.

Pruning: Need to learn to automate and delegate.

Purposeful Experience: What kinds of experiences would you like to schedule into the upcoming month? More outdoor activities with family. Golf, swimming, picnic.

What experiences would help you enjoy life more? 1 week vacation every quarter. Need to see the ocean and smell the sea.

Hours

Time Logger chart:

Additional Questions

  • How do you feel about the work you’re doing right now? I think Im doing great work. I often get praisies and good reviews from my leads.
  • Do you feel like you’re doing your best work? Yup.
  • What are areas for improvement?Mentoring, automation
  • What do you perceive to be lacking in your work right now? Pretty content. Maybe to work from home more. Learn more about web services.
    • What do you perceive to be lacking in your life right now? Time with husband, relationship with parents and friends
  • What can you do about it? I can be more deliberate with how I choose to spend my time.

Thinking About How to Spend My 2 year old’s birthday

The moment I learned I was pregnant, I already imagined throwing a birthday party for her. It’s going to be Star Wars-themed. Of course, she’s named Jedi after all.

I have looked into Pinterest tod look for inspiration. She’s going to have a BB8 cake, Storm trooper cookies.. you know, the entire Star Wars ensemble.

I ordered balloons and stressed out about her giveaways. I searched all over the web on how to decorate the house and make a back drop for her grand birthday party.

But months before her first birthday, I realized I didn’t want to stress her out. She was still so shy at the time and would cling to me for dear life when she’s surrounded by strangers and even my friends or family she doesn’t see often.

So my husband and I decided we are going on a family trip on her and his birthday. Her birthday is just 30 years and 364 days before his. 🙂 We went to LA and Seattle and enjoyed our family time. It was a very intimate, simple way of celebrating her first birthday and congratulating ourselves for surviving the 1st 365 days of her life. I think it was the best decision we could have made as parents for our dear little girl. She felt loved, secure, and happy with the undivided attention of her parents.

We took a lot of pictures at the zoo during her birthday and at the forest (forgot what its name was – husband said it was where part of Twilight was filmed).

Now 7 months before her 2nd birthday, I am already planning (again).

  • How many guests to invite?
  • What time to have the party?
  • What food to serve?
  • Where to hold the party?
  • When to have the party?
  • How to set up the house?
  • Do I really want to stress about this??? Haha. I’m just NOT used to throwing parties and entertaining people. I would rather sit at the back or in the corner away from the crowd. Maybe my husband has rubbed off on me, being a loner and anti-social. Haha. I want my daughter to have fun but at the same time I don’t want to be stressed. Oh, well.. we will see how it goes a few months from now.

Thinking About How to Enjoy Life More

My husband and I are both home buddies- We just like to stay in the house on weekends and holidays. But now that Myka is bigger, I’d like to go out more and do fun activities outdoors. But I don’t have any idea what to do or where to go

Here’s a list:

Spring

  • gardening
  • swimming
  • camping
  • walk in the park
  • fishing

Summer

  • go san Antonio River walk
  • waterpark
  • weekend vacation

Time Tracking

I stumbled upon one of Sacha’s YouTube videos where she talked about how she is tracking her time and what benefits she was able to get from that activity.

I have done this 8 or so years back but I used a notebook and a pen to track my time. Now with the age of smartphones and apps, I just went to Google Play and found so many apps I can use for free to track time. I chose aTimeLogger and it seems to be very easy to use.

I am excited to see where exactly my time goes after a month of time tracking and how I can tweak it to get more out of life.

Hw can I integrate using an S-pen with blogging?

This is really cool. I’ve been wanting to use my Spen to write blog posts and this is just amazing! Brings me b.ck

to the good ol ddays when writing on a journal daily was my thing. I think its only drawback is when you make a mistake and want to correct it. you will have to correct it after you are done wri ting the whole thing coz it kinda messes the text but I am still amazed with how good the Note8 is able to translate my handwriting to text. I wasn’t even trying to writer nicely. And it was able to translate the words correctly. I wish I could screenshot or take a video of this coz you won’t really appreciate it til you see it working. I’ve had this phone for over a month now and this is the first time I used this! ugh! Ok, will be using this more. I paid almost IK USD for this! I’m happy with this purchase now.

Myka at 17

She is such a big girl now!

  • Walks
  • Runs
  • Dances
  • Feeds herself
  • “Sings” along nursery rhymes
  • Loves watching ABC Kids TV songs in YouTube
  • Sleeps an average of 10 hours uninterrupted
  • Separation enxiety but stops crying after a minute
  • Plays with strangers, she is more friendly
  • Uses and operates her tablet. I don’t like her playing on it for a long time though
  • She doesn’t like sharing her toys with other kids. We want to expose her to other kids and learn to socialize