Liya found her blanket! After 3 months, Liya finally found her beloved baby blanket–the original “wokkety”–it was under our (Jan & Angela’s) bed. We are all still puzzled as to how it got there. Nutmeg must have been hoarding it all this time.
Sabriya can really sit up now—if she’s propped up into a sitting position. She no longer topples over after a few seconds.
We’re in D.C. visiting Angela’s parents. The trip out yesterday went fairly smoothly, with the exception of one panic-inducing moment when Liya accidentally swallowed a quarter.
The house here is pretty full. Johnny and Zenni are here with Anthony and Brian, and the Yamamuras are visiting from Narita, Japan. The Yamamuras spent the day at the Smithsonian, but the rest of us mostly poked around the house. In the afternoon someone managed to work up enough group momentum to get all of us out of the house. We drove a short distance to Cabin John Park in Rockville so all the kids could ride on the little train they have there. The train ride was only about 10 minutes long, but the weather was perfect, and the kids had fun playing at the playground in the park.
Last night we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary early. Since we had babysitting coverage here in D.C. (including bonus coverage from the Yamamuras), we left the children in McLean and headed into D.C. proper. A few months ago Jan had tried to book a room for this trip at the Jefferson Hotel, where we’d spent our wedding night. However, the Jefferson is closed for renovations, so Jan booked the Hay-Adams Hotel instead. The hotel is most famous for its view of the White House, although only a few of the rooms can actually see any bit of that landmark. Our room was a nice suite on the third floor looking towards St. John’s Church.
For dinner we ate at Marcel’s a short walk away. The meal was good. Angela’s favorite course was the escargot, and Jan’s was the cod in a light but spicy broth. The restaurant helped us celebrate the occasion with some champagne on the house.
When Jan had to fly out of Dulles around noon today (to make it back for Cozi’s board meeting tomorrow), we squeezed in a tourist stop at the National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Haly Center which is right at the airport. It’s big, far bigger than we could really cover in the hour we had available… or in the 45 minutes for which Anya and Liya had energy to walk around. The highlight was probably seeing the Space Shuttle Enterprise, whose test flight both Jan and Angela remember from their childhoods.
Up until a few days ago, Bree’s verbal repertoire (while cute) was fairly limited: aaaaAAAAaaaarrgghh. A couple days ago, she mastered “Ga ga ga ga ga” and has been saying it fairly nonstop. She has even extended it to an infant-version of the Chinese word for “older sister”: “gheh gheh”! Yesterday, she found Angela’s raspberry sounds hilarious and an hour later had mastered that too. I never thought I’d find a “Pppffffftt!” directed my way so absolutely charming!
Tomorrow Anya is going to the sleepover party at SCDS. She’ll need to bring a sleeping bag, which is great because she and Liya have had fun lately playing with the sleeping bags. Tonight after dinner Jan got out his sleeping bag too. Jan, Anya, and Liya all played a game of “Slug Tag”, which involved crawing around on the floor in sleeping bags chasing one another. To some extent, even Sabriya could join in this game.
Liya and Anya took turns playing Go with Mommy and Daddy this morning.
The most often requested bedtime songs these days are “Haru ga Kita” (Anya’s choice) and “Home on the Range” (Liya).
favorite foods. Bree’s favorite foods are still on a short list:
Tofu
Plain, whole yogurt
Cheerios
Blueberries (cut in half)
Senbe (Japanese rice crackers) (she gnaws on these until it turns into something more like glue, but they last our whole meal)
Jan took Anya and Liya to Cozi for the morning as part of “Take Our Kids to Work” day. The event was a bit of a zoo, but it all worked out okay. Liya got to do a cool “Cozi Dot” picture frame project, and Anya designed a Birthdays area for Cozi.
Today is our 10th wedding anniversary! Although our big celebration was earlier this month in D.C., we did go out for a nice dinner at Chez Shea in Pike Place Market.
Bree has her first two tiny little teeth coming in! They’re on the bottom.
Not Good News. Today as we were driving back home from school, my older girls started arguing about snacks. “It’s not fair! She got rice crackers and I didn’t!” said the older one. The younger one just kept eating, and despite my pointing out that the elder got Goldfish and the younger didn’t, etc. etc, the cry “It’s not fair!” persisted. I took this opportunity to make a news announcement. There was much anticipation since I made the girls wait until they were quiet. Then, after a little more build-up, I announced, “Life’s not fair!” After a moment of reflection, Anya remarked, “That’s not good news.”