January 22,2026-

My son worked at clearing all our yards of leaves-until close to 11:30 p.m. A suctioning, mulching and bagging tool, carried on his back, made a four hour job shrink to two .

This came about after he put in eight hours of work and spent a few hours with his daughter.

My daughter-in-law, after seeing her mother off at the airport, came back determined to handle her own mothering duties as independently as possible. She did just fine, which shows that one’s most heartfelt efforts to give advice, while appreciated, need to be tempered with letting the recipient of the advice integrate it into own skillsets.

Hana, for her part, is working on turning over and is practicing crawling up from the belly of the person holding her, up to the shoulder. She also has a couple of one-syllable utterances: “Hi”, when seeing me first thing in the morning and “Oww”, when something hurts. The latter is incorporated in the accompanying cry.

My little family is a remarkable trio, powering through life.