Category: The Baby

  • Sura Mpya: A New Chapter

    Sura Mpya: A New Chapter

    “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” -Anatole France

  • Better, Lighter, Stronger: A Tale of Hope

    Better, Lighter, Stronger: A Tale of Hope

    My eyes were as big as the moon when the orderly wheeled in the new Bipap machine for the Baby. The machine looked like someone had told a child, ‘Draw a Transformer with no arms and octopus feet with wheels and a heavy boxy head with a screen face’ and then brought it to life.…

  • G-Button: A Year in Review

    G-Button: A Year in Review

    I am a recovering black thumb. It’s not that I don’t care about plants. I care about them desperately- maybe too much. I’m a textbook overwaterer. When my plants start looking wimpy, I think, “Oh, they just need some water” and then they quickly die of root rot. Last year, my friend Lori brought me…

  • “Is He Dead?”: Teaching Kids Inclusion

    “Is He Dead?”: Teaching Kids Inclusion

    One of the gifts that The Baby’s developmental delays gives us is that he doesn’t care what people think about him. Once, I had him in a backpack and The Kid and I were ordering snow cones. The Baby leaned over and emptied his stomach of all the water I had just painstakingly given him.…

  • Plan G

    Recently, my sister was telling me about her first Reiki massage, where the guy waved his hands around to clear her energy. Near the end, he basically pushed his fist into her stomach until he stroked her spine, told her that she didn’t need to be a people pleaser anymore, and then left the room,…

  • The Good Doctor

    The Good Doctor

    The Baby turned five this week. It’s crazy. All of those five years tend to blur together. After all, time flies when you’re drowning in medical chaos (just kidding…kind of). On the night of his birthday, our dinner conversation centered around remembering all of his firsts- the first time he sat up, the first solid…

  • The Honeysuckle Vine

    The Honeysuckle Vine

    The other morning, The Kid and I were on our morning walk with Baby and dog in tow. The dog had stopped to poop so The Baby and I paused on the sidewalk in one of the Top Three Most Interesting Yards on our street. For some reason, three artsy hippy families bought houses in…

  • Girl, Interrupted

    Girl, Interrupted

    During this quarantine, I’ve been doing this app called 1 Second Everyday, where you basically create a video montage over a period of time made up of, you guessed it, a video clip of 1 second from each day. The Kid, who is a perpetual optimist and doesn’t want to think about or remember anything…

  • Great Guest. Reasonably Clean: A Travel Blog

    Great Guest. Reasonably Clean: A Travel Blog

    “When are we ever going to use this?” I remember thinking that about Greek mythology stories. Now, remember this was high school Beth and I was likely wearing my too-tight shirt that had tie-dye JESUS FREAK emblazoned across my chest and I found pagan theology distasteful. I probably even judgmentally snuck my pocket Bible out…

  • I Have Alot of Gall (Still)

    I Have Alot of Gall (Still)

    A week and a half ago, I had my very first adult visit to the ER. I thought I was having a heart attack. I wasn’t. Let me back up. Just a day before, The Kid and I had just returned from a very fun but very exhausting trip to Washington state. So, it was…