Spain Dad, a baby blog

Rick is my brother-in-law. He’s home from college for Christmas break, and he’s been a permanent fixture in the basement playing Modern Warfare 2 on his Xbox 360. I had to laugh this morning when Heidi, my sister-in-law, and her boyfriend Josh were sitting at the kitchen table and my dad-in-law popped his head around [...]

Kings Day is celebrated on January 6th, and it is the day children traditionally receive Christmas presents in Spain. The gifts help the children remember the part of the Christmas story when the “kings” or wise men brought presents to baby Jesus. We started celebrating Kings Day with Alleke last year because we wanted to [...]

April walked into the living room and leaned over the back of the recliner. “Mom, do you have a nightlight?” she asked. Mom was sitting on the couch with little Teo asleep in her arms. “I don’t think so,” she said, not taking her eyes off her grandson, “but you can look around.” April disappeared [...]

“Why is she crying?” Josie asked. I sat down on the couch next to Alleke and lifted her into my arms. “Because Alleke has to say goodbye to her cousins, and she’s not going to see them for a very long time. Not until Christmas.” Alleke screeched again like tires skidding through an intersection, then [...]

The midwife shook the bottle, turned it upside down, and drew a circle of blue gel on April’s belly. She rolled over the ultrasound machine, which was nothing more than a laptop on a cart with a holster on the side for the probe, which she untangled and rolled over April’s stomach like a miniature [...]

I sat on the couch with a pen in my hand. I was supposed to be editing my book proposal, but instead I was watching April stand on a Wii balance board. The balance board is an accessory for Nintendo’s Wii video game system, and it’s a white slab that looks like a household weight [...]

Alleke would like to show you her wooden shoes and how to scrub the streets before the parade…

I watched DJ copy his spelling words onto lined paper. s-c-a-r-e-c-r-o-w t-o-o-t-h-p-a-s-t-e a-w-h-i-l-e c-h-e-r-r-y k-a-p-u-t I stared at the last word. “Kaput?” I asked. I looked at my sister who was making rice in the kitchen. “DJ has some Dutch spelling words,” she explained. “You know, the words we still use around here.” I raised [...]

Legos by PPDIGITAL. April sat on the couch with a book watching her two nephews construct guns out of legos. The two boys worked quietly and carefully until they finished, at which point they stopped to admire each other’s work. Hunter, the older of the two boys, ran upstairs to find a snack, and DJ [...]

April and I were walking through town last night when the sirens went off. A woman ran out onto her porch and yelled at us. “Do you have a place to go?” she asked. “There’s a tornado coming.” She held the screen door while we ran inside, and all of us, including her three little [...]