August 19, 2026-Hana finally had enough of a dry chicken tender and tipped her plate over, onto the high chair tray. I put everything back onto the plate, and after she had composed herself again (after about ten minutes), heated the meat in a slight water base. She finished all the vegetables and grains-and ate about half of the chicken, then pushed the plate away- There was nothing rude about the last action; she was just not a fan of what was probably a tasteless item. I think this girl will be happy when her pediatrician gives the go-ahead for adding herbs and spices to her diet. She is, generally speaking, a plate cleaner, not a plate dumper.

My granddaughter is on a larger mission. She can already stand, for ten minutes, with just one hand holding onto a bar of the playpen. She can take 4-5 steps, if someone is supporting her. Her speech has the appropriate cadence, intonation reflective of her mood and even a questioning inflection, when she wants to know something. I can usually interpret what she is saying, based on context.

There was good news, when her mother got home this evening. Yunhee will have next week off. Hana will turn eight months old on Saturday, and have her mother’s company for the week. She seemed to get a bit of what her mother was saying-and smiled at the three of us, one at a time.

HANA’S NOTE- Papa can be stubborn, and I guess I can be, also. He is not mean, though, and when I lose my temper, he just keeps calm. I need that.

YEAR IN REMEMBRANCE-2002 This seemed to be a year for the abductions of girls, on a more open scale than in the past. There was the case of Elizabeth Smart, taken from her home, in June. She would be held captive until March, 2003. There was Erica Pratt, kidnapped near her home in Philadelphia, held in a house and able to escape, the next day, by chewing through the duct tape that bound her wrists and smashing a window. Some nearby children helped her get out of the house and alerted police. Other girls were not as fortunate; and some were killed, While the number of victimized girls was probably not any larger than the all too great number of such cases, every year, the media finally was getting sensitive to the phenomenon, in part because of the work of John Walsh and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The nation was also still dealing with the aftermath of September 11, and November 12, 2001-as well as the “Shoe Bomber”, who attempted to set of an explosive in his shoe, while on a Transatlantic flight, in December of the the previous year. A botched attempt to fly a plane into a bank headquarters, in Tampa and attacks on a Jewish pre-sschool in Los Angeles, in March, served only to keep fears raw. Then, in October, came the mass murders in Bali, 202 people being killed. We saw the Transportation safety Agency established=primarily at airports, but also at ferry terminals and at railway stations.

Through all this, Penny, Aram and I kept steady. I contented myself with substitute teaching, in two Phoenix school districts, and was able to offer continuity. Penny kept on as a second grade teacher, at El Mirage Elementary. Aram finished middle school and began his freshman year at Cortez High school, near our apartment. We had to deal with incompetent managers, after the man who had negotiated our lease left. Mold issues persisted, until I obtained the business phone number of the investment banker who owned the complex and called him to explain our situation. He sent his own crew out, from San Diego, and both our apartment and the next door neighbour’s unit were successfully relieved of mold. That sort of cooperation doesn’t happen very often, according to the attorney who helped us out on another issue. (Charges being added on, in mid-year.)

It was a fairly normal year for us, ahead of some doozies.