Spain Dad, a baby blog

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…

Cemetery where my grandpa was buried on Wednesday I walked down the steps of the church and across the lawn, passing through the scattered headstones to the plot of black dirt. My grandpa was buried here on Wednesday. The wind beat against me as I shivered and crossed my arms, marveling at how everything, including [...]

St Mary’s Church by roytsaplinjr. I spent Saturday afternoon in a tank top weed eating around tombstones in the cemetery where my grandmother is buried. The stones are scattered around a rural church, which sits like a schoolhouse on the corner where two highways cross, giving a handful of folks a reason to pull into [...]

Delta Air Lines Boeing 757-232 by Cubbie_n_Vegas. I expected to be in Madrid this morning, but I’m in Atlanta. I was one of thousands of people stuck at the airport. A delayed flight, then a missed flight, and eventually standing in line for four hours to rebook for the next day was everyone’s story. I [...]

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 [...]

April has been thinking a lot lately about how to make our home more environmentally friendly. While we’re here in the US, she’s been doing some online research and buying books and supplies. Last night we were sitting at the kitchen table with our laptops when April looked up and said, “Hey, what do you [...]