Web Development

Learning is Awesome!

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This weekend was very unplanned and very awesome. I love weekends like that, where we just figure out what we want to do as we go, and it ends up being amazing.

Friday, we played our Pathfinder campaign again. It was so much fun, and hilarious because as part of the story, Bobby invoked a particularly funny game of Everyone is John that we played. That game, if you’ve never played it, is hilarious, and you need to play it. Preferably with people who have a ridiculous sense of humor. It’s really simple, the rules are a page long, and it’s so fun.

Saturday morning, we made the drive out to the Stoney Creek Nature Center to hold some Monarch butterflies and watch them be tagged and released for migration. That part was amazing, but we got sooo much more than that. Both Bobby and I got to release Monarchs outside, we also watched a short presentation to learn more about them. Our friend, Kimmy, raises Monarchs all the way from egg to migration, and she helped the nature center become certified as a Monach migration way station. Anyway, we not only got to watch some fly off, but we also had the absolute pleasure of witnessing a Monarch emerging from its chrysalis. It was absolutely breathtaking, I’ll add the photos of it at the end of this post. After we were finished being in awe of the new butterfly, we went and had lunch with Kimmy.

We also learned a lot about Lukas that day, just watching him do butterfly-related crafts with the woman who was running the presentation. Watching how well he worked with a glue stick and safety scissors was great, we had no idea he worked so well with them. So, after we got back home, we decided to go to Joann’s and pick up a bunch of crafting supplies for him. We’ve discovered that he’s a really good kid, but if he’s not occupied with something and starts to build up too much pent up energy, that’s when he starts acting up. At home, he decorated a little birdhouse, played with some popsicle sticks, and did some coloring. I love seeing him so excited.

Sunday marked our first trip of the year to the cider mill, and our first time going to Franklin Cider Mill. Lukas had a lot of fun, the donuts and cider were delicious, and Lukas got to play with one of his friends from school while we were there. Bobby and I also really enjoyed ourselves.

Today was a great day. It was a pretty average day at work, but it was good. After work, Bobby and I got a little destroyed by our personal trainer, but it was a good kind of destroyed. He did some work outs with us that are super easy to do anywhere, which is awesome. I love full-body, circuit training type workouts. It sounds weird, but it feels good to do those body weight work outs and have your body just be done. Pushing to the limit is how you get stronger. We came home and had an amazing dinner and now we’re just winding down.

I realized this evening that Lukas is really beginning to show self-control. There were a couple of times, but the most major situation this evening was that he went into the fridge to get a juice, and Bobby and I told him no and that he had to wait until dinner to have another. A lot of times, he would have just taken the juice out and gotten a time out. This time, he pulled his hand back and came over to me crying. I expressed to him that I understood that he felt very frustrated because he really wanted that juice, but that I was very proud of him for having self-control when he was told not to get one. I reminded him that dinner was almost done and he could have one soon. He was able to calm down after a few minutes and all was well. That was honestly the first time I really saw him fight the urge to go against what I told him. I am such a proud mommy this evening.

He’s also super funny. Lately he’s been making up other words to songs that he knows, and his pretend play is awesome. We have a huge box that we got a delivery in and he’s been using it as a house. He also continues to tell us crazy stories. The other morning when he woke up, he told me a story about a ghost and how he yelled at it to go away, I don’t know if we’re in creepy kid story territory now, but we might be.

Also, at the gym, Lukas plays in the play room while we work out. This evening I thought I’d see if we could get him to help clean up the toys, and he did! He stayed and helped until they were all put away, it was so nice to see him do that. His teacher also told us he had a very good day in pre-school today. I love seeing him learn, whether it’s education, or whether it’s practical every day life skills like helping, or exhibiting self-control. That’s when I feel like we’re actually doing a good job as parents. My biggest goals as a parent are to raise him to be an emotionally intelligent adult who isn’t afraid of his feelings, for him to be a smart, kind, compassionate, productive member of society. I know that sort of sounds like a lot when talking about a person who is only 3, but I think it’s important to keep in mind why you do what you do. I feel that gentle parenting is very important, and even though I slip up and raise my voice at him, I do my best to teach by example, to help him identify and work through his emotions, and as much as I can when he’s behaving badly, to teach him why what he’s doing is wrong. I’m not perfect, I lose my temper and raise my voice, I get frustrated, but thankfully I have a wonderful co-parent and he often steps in when I’m at the end of my rope.

Speaking of Bobby, I am very proud of him, as well. One of his dreams for a long time has been to make a video game. He’s finally decided to push himself to make just a simple game. Often, he has lofty goals and gets overwhelmed by the task at hand, but making a small game so that the goals are more achievable has been working really well! He’s working on a cute, simple side scrolling game and it’s coming along really well.

Also, on the subject of learning, I will be going to a talk about Object Oriented CSS and BEM tomorrow in Detroit after work. I’m always excited to learn more about my industry, network with people in it, and discover ways that I can improve my code. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s a process, that the web development industry is always changing and evolving, and that I just have to keep changing and evolving with it.

And now, pictures!

Monarch emerging!

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Lukas decorating a bird house!

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Monday…Not So Bad After All

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This post may seem odd on the heels of yesterday’s post, but bear in mind that yesterday’s post took me days to write, and to decide if I was actually going to write about the things that I did. It’s important for at least myself for me to write about those things, to have a record and see if I notice a pattern, or even to just be reminded if it happens again, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that I’ll be okay.

Today was pretty great overall. It was a frustrating day at work because bug fixing for Internet Explorer is just awful. Note to front end devs, flexbox is super freaking awesome…if the only IE you have to worry about is 10 and up. It works swimmingly on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It’s a brilliant tool, but since we still need to support IE9 on most projects, it’s more complicated since that browser doesn’t support it. Oddly enough, though, I ended the day in a decent mood. The frustration didn’t really upset me like it has been. It also makes me feel good that my boss is confident that I can get better with programming to help with those projects coming up that don’t necessarily have a front end aspect. I will always prefer front end development, but I do get really excited when I do a programming piece and make it work, especially if there is a bit of a struggle and then a victory. I just really like solving puzzles, and both back and front end development are like weird puzzles that can be hard to solve.

Lukas was absolutely awesome this afternoon, all afternoon. He was in a very happy, fun, hilarious mood, and he didn’t end up in time out once. It was fantastic. I love his funny little personality so much. When I told him he couldn’t do or have something, and offered an alternative, he was very receptive. We took him to the gym to play while we worked out with our trainer, he loves it there. When I gave him a shower this evening, he was happy and decided he wanted to play with the water and dance and sing.

Mine and Bobby’s work out with our trainer this evening was great! It was only our second session, but the experience has been nothing but positive already. He started the session by telling us that we both look a little more lean than last week, which is awesome since we both managed to make it to the gym three times last week. We decided recently that we just need to try harder to be in shape, for nothing more than to just have some energy left after work at the end of the day to play with our rambunctious, daredevil 3 year old boy. Being thin and having muscle tone are just really great byproducts of working out and having the energy to be active. I have a half marathon to run in a month and a half, and I’m slightly terrified at how it’s going to go. Anyway, the workout was really awesome, he had more of an idea of our abilities this time and gave us some fun full body workouts to do during this session, and he gave us a routine to do throughout the week. He also recommended doing a morning fasted run on the weekend, since that’s an excellent fat burner. I used to only run first thing in the morning, but I just haven’t wanted to get up early enough. If I find I’m able to wake up earlier, I might start doing that again. It’s dark by the time Lukas is in bed now, and even though I live in a very safe, well-lit area, I’m not all about running by myself at night. Something about it just really freaks me out.

I got to chat with one of my best friends about her life in Boston tonight. I know she’s super happy, and that she’s doing great work at a job that she loves, but I miss her. Talking to her tonight was really nice, and made me realize I need to make time to go see her in Boston, it sounds lovely.

I kind of wonder if the negative wave of emotions I was feeling last week was a result of my hormones going nuts after starting a brand new workout routine. I haven’t weight trained in a long time, and I was way more active last week than I have been in a long time. I do have a history of struggling with negative emotions that I have a hard time pulling out of, but it’s very possible that it’s just a temporary chemical surge that caused it. I say that because I’m feeling awesome tonight, and just yesterday morning I was struggling with feeling very upset out of nowhere about nothing in particular. It also hit me really hard out of nowhere for seemingly no particular reason. Thankfully, it happens way less frequently than it used to, it’s been quite a while since it’s been that bad.

It could honestly be a multitude of things that helped. Writing about it may have helped, not only to get the negative stuff out, but also writing about how good I have it. Sometimes I have to remind myself that when there’s nothing in particular causing my sadness and self-confidence issues, I just need to look around at my family, my wonderful and supportive husband, my amazing little boy, my dogs, my job that I love, and my friends, and realize that things are good. I don’t know if this works for everyone, I’ve never been diagnosed with anything and I’ve never taken any medication for it, I just know that I get uncontrollably sad and negative sometimes, and it can take a little while to dig myself out of the pit of despair, so to speak. Bobby’s never-ending support always helps, he’s able to help me be objective, even when I don’t want to be. Maybe my body has balanced out since I worked out regularly last week. I really don’t know. I’m just glad that the terrible feeling I was having has receded, and that I had a pretty awesome start to the week.

Small Victories

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Today was a day for small victories, as the title implies. Small victories are important, though. Sure, the big ones are fantastic and exhilarating. However, it’s the small ones that keep you going when you’re frustrated, or when you’re just about to give up. I’d say they’re almost more important, because they help keep you going, and help you realize that yes, you really can do it.

The first victory, and most important one to me at the moment, was that I was working on a project at work today that had three boxes that were structured exactly the same, just with different information and colors. I had originally written out the code to be very repetitive. I should add here that I develop in WordPress primarily, and almost exclusively at the moment (yes, I will build my own theme for this site eventually). So, when I structure a page in a site, I’m pulling info from the admin onto the page (very simple explanation). I originally wrote out the PHP/HTML to be repetitive instead of looping it, because it was easier and I was already going over quote for the page as it was. Friday, I just couldn’t deal with my bad code anymore and decided to take the time to re-write it as a loop. Now, that sounds simple. For someone who doesn’t do programming as their primary job, I’m a front end developer, even though I got started in programming, it was a big frickin’ deal that I got it all working today. I had to pull info from multiple fields in three separate admin boxes, build some arrays, loop them out into three separate boxes, and each box also has unique links that are added in the admin, and there can be as many or as few as the user wants. So, I was pulling a lot of information, and doing a loop within a loop. I got really close to finishing it Friday, but I needed to get home, so I put the rest off to this morning. I got really close to giving up, because I was having a bit of trouble figuring the inner loop since I was accessing arrays within arrays inside of a loop within a loop. But, I did it!! I frickin’ did it, and it was glorious. I needed that.

Why did I need that? Because I’ve been feeling imposter syndrome hardcore lately, and let me tell you, it is an absolutely terrible feeling, and I think I really upset the people I care about when I just refuse to believe when they tell me I don’t suck. Imagine, if you haven’t experienced it, being at your job that you really enjoy and really care about, and feeling like you suck at it, that you somehow tricked your way into your job, that your boss will find out how terrible you are and fire you, and that you will never be good at this thing that you enjoy doing so much. It’s awful, and I don’t wish it on anyone. So, this is why I say that small victories are so important. I so desperately needed that little victory this morning, and it was enough to make me feel so great that I shouted with excitement, did a little happy dance, and made my friend come look at it because I was so proud of myself. That moment is what I need to remember next time I’m feeling so incredibly down about my abilities.

On an only somewhat unrelated note, Bobby and I had our very first session with our personal trainer today. It was hard, but it was really good. I did assisted pull-ups (I’ve never been able to do any pull-ups, the goal is to eventually not need to use a machine), and even though I had terrible form and had to modify my last 2 sets, I did 3 sets of 10 push-ups. I’ve never had any significant upper body strength. Again, even though it wasn’t great, it was a small victory. It made me realize that eventually, I won’t need to do modified push-ups, and that I can work up to unassisted pull-ups. It gave me goals. I finally got to do some kettle bell workouts, and some different weighted squats. My legs are jelly, but I feel happy. It’ll feel so great to be back in shape again. I’m a small person, and I can run and cycle, but I need to build muscle to truly be in shape. Our trainer is so awesome that he’s helping us adjust our diets and told us we can text him whenever we have questions. I have a great feeling about this step in our journey.

We’ve capped the night with a delicious dinner, time with our wonderful, hilarious child, a bit of housework, and some relaxing time. I hope I get some time to knit tonight, but I’d settle for some reading.

I guess, in closing, take the small victories and internalize them, because they’re an important part of your happiness. Tell people about them, write about them, remember them when you’re having a bad day. I’m not typically great at it, but I’m going to try to take my own advice here, because I think it’s one thing that will help battle the days that I’m frustrated, or down, or just feeling like I can’t win. The truth is, I can win, you can win, we all just have to remember that on the bad days.