We leave tomorrow. Tomorrow. Me, Raines Wilder, and this other kid flipping about inside me. Aaron is gonna stay back and keep things grounded in Nashville, cuddling with the animals and tree work and all the other many things he does to love and care for us. We’ll be back in four weeks, which should give us enough time to have some real adventure. Raines Wilder gets the part where we’ll be speaking Spanish all day with everyone and we’ll need to Skype with Papa every day because we already miss him. I’m just not convinced he gets the month-long part. We were in Costa Rica last year for 6 weeks, but he was such a little babe and even then he asked for Papa too many times a day. Too many tears got logged into that trip. Besides, that trip was rough on both of us and this time will be gold and silver and stone. He’s a boy now, un niño feroz even. So we got this.

We’re headed all the way down to Mérida, on the Yucatán Peninsula. Our friends Norma and Silvio are lovingly welcoming us into their home (where they have a pool….¡What!). At this point in my little life, sleeping in a friend’s house while traveling with a three-year-old ninja child and being, ya know, kinda pregnant is so many times better than sleeping in a bathroom stall turned hostel room with a barn door (This was fun, by the way, when I didn’t seem to mind the thought of getting kidnapped or shot or something.).

It’s gonna be brilliant, this one. Plus it’s in the 70s and 80s every day down there and I’m pretty sure my heart will start pumping again and I’ll look more me than vampire. Sweet, I’ll take it. But you see, I’ve grown quite attached to Aaron. He’s my love and my hand gets held so well by him. And he sits by me. And he watched every episode of Spartacus with me. And he still loves me and comes home to me even though our lives are living a different kind of exciting these days (this will come and go in swells but I’m aiming for real-life goodness, not so much the win-free-cocaine-in-a-bathroom kind of material. Not my story, by the way). 

So off we go, the three of us. Off to México, where dreams are made and driving is more fun than church.