Words. I’ve always loved words. Loved understanding their meanings, their history, and the way sayings can be so different across languages. One of my favorites in Spanish is that someone thinks they’re the “ombligo del mundo” or “the bellybutton of the world.” In English we’d say they think they’re the…
My sweet sweet Nate, You turned 6 years old on March first and are a strong, smart, sweet and sassy, Spanish-speaking six-year-old. The past six years have gone much too fast. For all the lamentations of the terrible twos, the tantrumy threes, the feisty fours, the effing fives and now,…
We are eyeball-deep in schoolyard humor. Gone are the days of that catchy My Little Pony rhyme. We’ve almost forgotten the Y camp sing-along mantra of Hell-o. My name is Joe. I live at Cost-co, I play the ban-jo, and I own Michael Ange-lo. Or the ever more popular: My…
My oh my, I haven’t provided an update in quite some time. We’ve been holding down the fort for the past six weeks. And boy this fort has some vulnerabilities. The good news is that James has finished his six weeks of radiation, as of Tuesday, and is now home with…
The Scotts Valley Purnells brought James home this weekend for a little R&R. I was so so excited to see him on Friday I felt jittery as I left work. Mostly we took it easy this weekend. We had lots of cups of hot tea and several sessions of “barn…
I had a rough day today. I woke-up after a sleepless night with a body-racking cough. Stumbled downstairs in the dark, only to be faced with Nate’s balled-up white shirt and sock on the counter… a reminder of the dinnertime “ketchup explosion” two nights ago. The new box of cold delivered…
Sometime in November, Jacob experienced his first case of heartburn. I’m not exactly sure what we had for dinner that night, but he came to me on the couch, complaining that his heart hurt. He was pressing on his chest and breathing deeply and anxiously pacing back and forth. I…
Crazy to think that this past autumn, almost exactly twenty years ago, I met James in college here in San Luis. And it took us all that time to strategize and plan and finally make it back… We still laugh about the Valentine’s Day when he took me to dinner…
First, I went to school. Second, I did all of my classes, and then this is where it begins: I went to my backpack and got my bag of sweets and Valentine’s cards. They have Ninja Turtles and smell like pepperoni pizza. Then I passed them out to everyone in the “yellow” group.…
It’s the end of Week Two and I’m sure you’re all wondering… Where is Jaimie? How is James doing? Why haven’t there been any updates on the blog? What is HA-PPEN-ING? In a word: bedtime. I’ve been putting Jacob to bed twelve times a night. And then it’s 10:30 and…