I have been alive for....

Annie is going through that stage where in no time at all she began: holding her head up, looking here and there, concentrating, smiling and laughing, cooing. And also she thickened up and her eye color darkened and she started pooping more all at once instead of two dozen times a day. She is a little angel baby most all of the time. Oh, also she began regularly skipping a feeding in the middle of the night, so Bonnie gets more sleep these days.

I am pretty sure about teaching English in Houston in May. That gives me just over a month to finish up some projects here and get lined up for Summer. I don't know exactly we will do, but there's an opportunity for me to teach at a language school in Houston for May and June and longer if we choose. We are tossing over a bunch of scenarios which include Houston, Idaho, Korea again, and elsewhere. Also in our life sketch ideas we are considering Japan.

Let me tell you a little about more ancestors of my children. The names in their closest Japanese heritage are Koike, Akiyama, Iida, and Shima. Bonnie's maternal grandparents were born on Oahu and Hawaii to Japanese immigrants. The immigrants came from Osaka and near Hiroshima. Oh wait, I don't know for sure now. It looks like I need to learn more. At one point, I heard that there was a family mushroom farm in Japan. I am curious. Bonnie's middle name, Nobu, is the name of her grandmother's mother, born in Japan as Nobu Shima. Nobu stands for trust. Shima means island. Becker means baker, or an egg-stand.

So a hundredish years ago, these Japanese folks were adventuring further out to the Pacific. Meanwhile, the Azoreans I mentioned in a recent post were loading up on a boat to cross the Atlantic. My German ancestors in Iowa were setting off to work on land in Idaho, being developed by pioneers using Chinese labor. My Mormon ancestors, on the run from Missouri, were about to settle on some land there. I don't know what my mom's paternal branch was doing; I will have to investigate the Carsons some time. Nor do I know about Bonnie's dad's branch, but something tells me they were all collected already in southern Louisiana.

All three of our little tots were born in the same hospital here in Baton Rouge. Isaac has still lived most of his life overseas, but Annie has never even crossed a state line. Orry, bless his heart, has lived in five homes in his 45 months of life.

Tonight, we had some tortellinis in some spinach and artichoke cream sauce. With veggies on the side. I keep saying, if it weren't for the cheese, cream, and other animal based foodstuffs we eat here and there, we'd be 100% vegan. As it is, we're 100% vegan only some of the time.

And speaking of time, it is time to end this discourse.

P.S. I have been alive for almost 386 months.