Anya got her first phone message ever: a call from her best friend Jane who wanted to, quote, “tell her something”.
Since Anya is now 8, Angela decided now is a good time to teach her how to make eggs. But Anya will only eat egg whites, so Angela had to first teach her how to separate the eggs. Anya cooked her fried egg whites, ate them, wanted more, and cooked more. Now Angela is wondering what to do with all those egg yolks!
Angela’s with her dad and mom as her dad goes through back surgery. It’s a major surgery to correct his scoliosis, so she wanted to be there (for her mom as well as her dad). The surgery is long, but they do all the work they intended to do, and it looks good. There will be a second follow-up operation later this month.
Angela is with her dad and mom in Baltimore as her father Cheng-nan undergoes a marathon nine hour surgery to correct his scoliosis. He’d been considering the operation for a long time, but had decided not to go ahead with it. He finally changed his mind because the back pain had become debilitating. The operation is a success, with no major complications. This will be followed with a second operation at the end of November.
Bree continues to be fascinated with the book “Roscoe Riley Rules #1: Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs”, by Katherine Applegate and Brian Biggs. She carries it around the house on a daily basis. She somtimes takes it with her when we go in the car—and gets a little concerned when she has to let go of it so we can get her arms through the loops of her car seat. She is still completely uninterested in hearing the story, and will lose interest after page 1. She “reads” it to herself often, though, flipping the pages and talking to herself. She did this so much that she wore out the book, and we’ve had to buy a new copy.
Bree likes bath time.
A sleeping Daddy is a magnet for kid attention. Exhausted before dinner, Jan crashes on the family room couch. Bree instantly comes over to jump on Daddy. Liya and Anya cover him in stuffed animals and other random objects. Jan naps on regardless.
Anya’s new favorite food in the world is mustard. She puts it on pretty much everything. She buries hot dogs in it. She dips stuff in it. We blame our friend Bill—he’s the one who told Anya that, as a boy, he used to eat mustard sandwiches. This story opened Anya’s to the possibility that mustard is food all by itself and, since then, her mustard consumption has increased tenfold.
Angela takes Anya and Liya to the annual Gingermania event at the Washington Athletic Club, meeting up with their friends Jane and Katherine. Among their group, everyone decides that Anya’s was the “snowiest” (i.e., most covered in sugar frosting) and Liya’s was the “neatest”. Within a day or so, both houses are completely ransacked.
Angela takes Anya running with her for the first time. Anya’s a faster sprinter, but Angela’s slow and steady pace wins out.
Anya has a slumber party as a belated celebration of her eighth birthday. After much haggling, we settle on letting her have three friends over, and so she invites her good friends Ariella, Jane, and Kaila. In lieu of the standard pizza, Anya elects to have cheese fondue for dinner. Her friends are up for it, although it’s definitely a novelty. Everyone much more readily accepts the dessert: chocolate fondue.
After dinner, Anya plays the anime “Laputa: Castle in the Sky” for her friends. The movie is on the very edge of scary for these eight year-olds, and there are plenty of moments where the girls jump straight out of their sleeping bags. Anya and Liya frequent kibbitzing (“Don’t worry… the giant warrior robot is actually good.”) helps to keep everyone calm.
This evening Anya’s school classroom appeared briefly on a local TV news channel. The channel’s weatherman visited her class to talk about the weather, and they showed a quick shot of him posing with the class. (Anya’s the one in the orange shirt.)
Angela serves the girls pancakes for breakfast this morning. We often like to add stuff to pancakes, like chocolate chips or dried currants. This morning, Anya announces that she did not like the currant pancake she’s been given. Angela goes to give the pancake to Liya—but Anya objects. “Then Liya will have more than me!
An unusually sunny day calls for a bike ride. Bree insists on riding her trike. The steering concept still eludes her.
Bree enjoys a carousel ride while we wait downtown for our turn at pictures with Santa. At the beginning of the ride, she tells Jan she wants to sit on his lap. Jan says he’ll stand right next to her. By the end of the ride, she’s pushing his hands off the pole so she can ride by herself.
Jan goes to Japan for a business trip. Jan and Robbie are discussing Cozi with some folks who came to meet us in Seattle, and have now invited us to meet with them in Japan. The long travel day ends at the Hotel New Otani and dinner there with a number of the people we’re meeting with. Jan’s happy that he was able to shake off enough rust off his Japanese to make a passable self-introduction and dinner conversation.
Angela’s dad Cheng-nan undergoes the second surgery to completely rebuild his spine. We are relieved to hear the operation went well. The first surgery lasted all day; this second one takes only an hour and a half. However, for this one the surgeons operated from the front, going through the abdominal muscles. Combined with the effects of the first surgery, his recovery will be very long, probably 9-12 months.