eddvick

We hosted our first party of the season, for Katie's 4th & 5th grades. About a dozen kids came by and played carry-the-ping-pong-ball and badminton and croquet, while the adults talked and sometimes played along. Katie's school has a lot of combined sessions for the uppermost two classes, so they're pretty integrated. Next year Katie's in 5th, so we'll have to start deciding where she's going for middle school.

4th grade is turning out to be quite the challenge for Katie. She's in Sylvan now twice a week to better her math scores. She's started spontaneously making up mathematical word problems, so I think that's money well spent.

Last night she needed a lot of help creating a timeline for a science report she's writing. She needed to pick a scientist or inventor and put together a whole suite of reportage about that person. Her first pick was the man who created Coca-Cola, but with a bit of nudging from Amy she's switched her subject to Rosalyn Yalow, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology, and not coincidentally the mother of a friend of ours, prominent fan Ben Yalow. (Basically, she created the process of radioisotope tagging that lead to our understanding of how insulin and many other hormones & medicines work in the body.)

She got frustrated at having to start over on the timeline leventy-seven times, but finally finished it an hour after her normal bedtime.

--or more remiss than usual, were I not to mention that lovely and talented daughter Katie turned 10 day before yesterday. She had a big sleepover party this past weekend, which her parents were largely barred from attending. Reportedly, fun was had.

Katie's class is studying energy, and she had a lot of related words in her vocabulary that she had to use in sentences, like "hydroelectric", "watts", and "geothermal". Somehow, though, I cannot bring myself to agree with this sentiment:

"My body is made of adams."

So Katie wants her birthday party at Castle Ice next month. That should be fun. She's learning to skate backwards, and Amy's also taking lessons and can now spin. The downside is that the party needs to be at 12:30, which we think is a bit early.

Can't believe she'll be 9 already. Eep.

Technically, I helped build one, in Katie's 3rd grade classroom. The kids' workspaces are in the shape of boxy huts which had been repainted last week. We draped them and the ceiling with 20' long crumpled strips of green paper with paper leaves stapled to them. It looks way cool.

I can has lianas?

"I want to be a know-it-all so I don't have to go to school and I can watch the Simpsons."

Things to do this summer.

Camping with my mom and dad
Make sushi
Plant bamboo
Go fishing.

Katie had a temperature again this morning, so we didn't get to go have a fun day with her "China sisters"¹. This is Chinese New Year, so there was a plan for yummy dim sum and watching a lion dance in the International District². What there was was a low key day of hanging out and watching a marathon of Day Break while Amy hung with the China sisters and Katie had an afternoon nap.

It seems naps are particularly good weapons in the war on heart disease and stroke. (via)

1. When we adopted, we traveled to China with five other families. The other kids who were adopted are Katie's 'China sisters'. We try to have get-togethers every once in a while.

2. Those outside Seattle may not know the term "International District", chosen to represent Seattle's Chinatown, Little Saigon, and Japantown. Chinese merchants would like to go back to just calling it Chinatown, but the City Council wants to retain the euphemism.