For more blur and better sharpness & open the aperture, add space behind your subject, shoot in shade, steady the camera, and focus on the nearest eye. If you buy, a compact fast prime matched to your sensor helps a lot, and a light touch of selective eye sharpening in post completes the look.
Some routers enable power saving tricks that confuse IoT clients. On the 2.4 band try disabling Target Wake Time and U APSD or WMM power save if those appear in advanced wireless. Keep legacy data rates available and avoid setting a high minimum data rate or minimum RSSI, since that can push sleepy plugs to drop when they miss a few beacons. Also turn off airtime fairness for that SSID. These tweaks make the network more forgiving, which is what these tiny radios need.
I default to "promised to call—before I lose this phone.". For what it's worth, taking a few minutes to practice this in a calm setting usually helps it stick.
