August | 2018 | Occasional Dispatches from San Jose

We don’t have many new photos to present at the moment, though there are a great many pictures from the summer we have yet to process, so we’ve thrown together a small collection of photos from early 2013, way back before William was born, and not too long after we had learned that he was on his way.

In the meantime, the school year is well under way—we’re entering its third week, and William’s first full day is tomorrow—and the summer’s festivities are gradually coming to an end. The Parks for Life program Julie has been doing with the kids wraps up on Friday, and the older kids’ swimming lessons are finished on Thursday.

So far, Julia has adjusted beautifully to the more complicated world of high school. She’s enjoying her classes, has found a nice group of friends, and even has a part in the school play. She’s been great about working on Khan Academy with me to get ahead of the game in math, and she’s had a positive attitude about working with us to adjust to the greater challenges presented by high school coursework.

Joe, likewise, is staying on top of things. He hasn’t had much homework to speak of yet, but Mr. Guevara, his history teacher and one of the principals behind the founding of UPA, said at Back to School night that we should expect that to change shortly. The biggest challenge he’s facing at the moment is the fact that his clarinet isn’t working right, which has him stressed out and Julie making multiple trips to the music store to get things sorted.

Finally, William is loving TK with Ms. Pak. According to Julie, his only complaints have been that he doesn’t get to stay long enough, and that there’s not enough time to play outside during lunch recess. Both of those complaints will be addressed this week, when the class switches from half days to full days, giving him a longer lunch break and about two and a half extra hours at school each day.

He’s also started working with the new Khan Academy Kids app, which has him very excited because he gets to do “homework” like his older siblings. We’ll see how he feels in a few years when we’re making him do math exercises over the summer.

Even with limited time in class, he’s already producing masterpieces like this:

One can only imagine what he’ll do with another ten hours every week.

Gallery: Early 2013

It’s been a while since we posted any new pictures—largely because we’ve been busy with other projects—but the new school year has arrived, which means that it’s time for our annual back-to-school pictures.

Julia is starting high school this year, which is scary on any number of levels (though it will actually be more of a shock to me when she starts her sophomore year, for reasons that are specific to my situation). She’s found a nice group of friends and is going into the year with a great deal of enthusiasm that has yet to be damped by the workload, which one of her school administrators promised at the eighth grade promotion ceremony last spring would be heavier than what the kids would encounter in college. I have my doubts about that particular assertion, but nevertheless, the specter of testy late-night study sessions hangs over us.

Joe is moving to UPA for seventh grade this year, which makes this the first time since 2014 that he and Julia have started the year at the same school. He’s a little bit nervous about changing schools after having spent a single year at Willow Glen Middle, but we are hopeful that the change in context will give him a fresh start socially; as our old friend Michael Kimmitt has pointed out, middle school boys are generally awful (though he typically uses more colorful language in his description).

He’s especially nervous about his placement in Advanced Band, where he is the only seventh grader and one of only two middle school kids. He’ll be fine once he gets the music and starts playing—the intermediate band at Willow Glen does a great job of pushing kids’ abilities—but his trepidation reminds me of how an age difference of just a couple years can feel like a yawning chasm in seventh grade.

Lastly, William is starting TK, or transitional kindergarten, this year. It’s a relatively new program at Booksin that provides a bridge to kindergarten for four-year-olds who were born between September 2 and December 2, and thus just missed the cutoff. They start off slowly, with half days for the first couple weeks of the year, but after that, he’ll be at school all day, just like his brother and sister. As you can imagine, this is all very exciting for William—and also for us, even if it means we have to make three lunches every morning instead of two.

Julia's first day of high school