The Moz Weaning Plan

As sure as the sun rises in the east, the time has come for Moses to begin weaning. Really, the process started back when he was 6 months of age, with the introduction of solid foods. Weaning normally lasts about 2 years, when an infant's nutrition is entirely from the family menu (no breast milk or supplement formula). But at this point, the specific actions are to phase out breastfeeding and diversify his food profile.

The plan then is to supplement his nutrition with baby formula (we use Similac) and introduce more solid foods, sometimes letting him eat from our plates (not talking mastication here). He is no longer actively nursing anyway (more conversant with bottle feeding), and his mother has stopped pumping because of a naturally dwindling supply. There is, however, about 3 weeks worth of breast milk in refrigeration, and that will be it for him.

Enter the Baby Brezza Formula Pro, our main tool for this supplementation stage. In less than 10 seconds, you can have a bottle of warm consistent formula ready to use. We don't have to prepare his night-time bottle before we go to sleep anymore -- it can instead be done on demand whenever he needs it. Which is a good thing, because sometimes we don't need to: these days, he's been sleeping almost throughout the night (down at 7pm, up at 5am or so). The plan is to reduce the supplementation the more he eats regular food, perhaps in the next 7 months.

The original plan, discussed before he was born, was to breastfeed him about a year. Obviously nature has its own mind, and we must adapt. It's a poignant milestone, I think.

Unemployed No More

My fourth week at the county has my plate as full as if I were an old-timer here, with the usual software development projects filling my ticket queue. But I'm not complaining: the job is a perfect match for my skills, has plenty of room to grow professionally, is quite flexible, and pays well (surprisingly competitive for a county government job). I am a Software Engineer III (senior level), responsible for implementing and maintaining integrations for the school district. By "integrations", I mean that when a couple of systems need to interface (exchange data or use each other's services), it is an integration that enables that sort of thing by providing a "bridge" or "adapter" for them to communicate.

The job is in Castle Rock, CO, about 40 miles door-to-door north of Colorado Springs where we live. It takes me 30-40 minutes to drive there in traffic, a much easier commute than when I worked in Denver for 3 weeks preceding this job. The county serves more than 8000 students, a considerable number of vendors, and thousands of teachers. I work in the student data and IT support services center, where a torrent of public school data are processed - everything from payroll to student grades and bus routes. It is a fun environment.

I was unemployed for 5 weeks total. My original intent had been to take a break from work (be unemployed) for 2-3 months, and had even qualified for unemployment benefits of $532/week. But during the second week, we realized we owed a crap ton to the IRS for 2014 (never mind a new baby and first home purchase, which we expected would give us great windfall). So I decided I would return to work as soon as possible to help cover the taxes we owed. Besides, technical recruiters also mentioned that long periods of unemployment would not look good on my résumé.

The job search was swift and lasted only 3 weeks. Everyday, I had a torrent of recruiter calls setting up phone interviews and such. I attended 5 in-person and 3 Skype interviews. I am blessed that my technical skills are currently in demand, with potential to fetch $40/hour or more on W-2 basis. I essentially had my pick of jobs, although my top 2 choices eventually didn't work out. One of them is still interviewing candidates to this day, and the other would only have been a 9-month contract without extension. My fifth choice was the first to make an offer, which is how I ended up in Denver for a while. Castle Rock was my third choice.

Because I was set up for this job by technical recruiters, I started out as a contractor for 2 months. In about 4 weeks, my hope is that I will be converted to a school district county employee. Except perhaps for the commute, this is as close to a perfect job as I could have hoped for. The commute itself is not bad: I now listen to podcasts more consistently during the commute.

Towards An Agile Family

I am a software engineer, and we use agile development methodologies at work. Scrum and Kanban are the life we live. I had never thought of using these methodologies outside of work until I saw this TEDTalk by Bruce Feiler, in which he explains that agile methodologies can lead to happier families by reducing stress and helping to better manage busy lifestyles.



After watching the TEDTalk with my wife, we decided we could institute some agility in our family, and immediately started doing daily standups. Every morning, we take 15 minutes to discuss three questions:
(1) How did yesterday go?
(2) What is our schedule like today?
(3) Are there any issues preventing us from making progress?

When there are issues, a quick plan of action is discussed and may lead to changes in how we approach the tasks or projects that are affected. The idea is for daily standup to be more informative than it is a planning session.

The immediate benefit has been improved communication and mindfulness of each other throughout the day. What else do we hope to gain from this? Easier change management, helping each other when common problems are encountered, being on the same page more often, and ability to create, modify or eliminate rules and expectations based on what is and what is not working. We think it will promote teamwork and provide opportunity to serve each other.

So far, the daily standup is all we have in place. Lots of families are doing agility successfully; we hope this becomes a mainstay, slowly but surely.