{"id":505997,"date":"2026-01-10T11:11:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T11:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/505997\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T11:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T11:11:13","slug":"raising-a-baby-in-altadenas-ashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/505997\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising a Baby in Altadena\u2019s Ashes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">\u201cSo, my daughter, Robin, was born Jan. 5, 2025.\u201d \u201cHi, baby. That\u2019s you.\u201d \u201cWhen I first saw her, I was like, \u2018Oh my God, she\u2019s here.\u2019\u201d \u201cShe was crying and immediately when she was up on my face, she stopped crying.\u201d \u201cI got the room with the view.\u201d \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t until way later, I saw a fire near the Pasadena Mountains.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re watching the news on the TV, hoping that it\u2019s just not going to reach our house.\u201d \u201cThe Eaton fire has scorched over 13,000 acres.\u201d \u201cSixteen people confirmed dead.\u201d \u201cMore than 1,000 structures have been destroyed.\u201d \u201cAnd then that\u2019s when we got the call. Liz\u2019s mom crying, saying the house is on fire.\u201d \u201cOh, please. No, Dios mio. Go back. Don\u2019t go that way. It\u2019s closed. Go, turn. Turn back.\u201d \u201cOur house is burning, Veli.\u201d \u201cOh my God.\u201d \u201cIt was just surreal. Like, I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s nothing left.\u201d \u201cNot only our house is gone, the neighbors\u2019 houses are gone, her grandma\u2019s house is gone. All you could see was ash.\u201d \u201cMy family has lived in Altadena for about 40 years. It was so quiet. There\u2019s no freeways. My grandmother was across the street from us. All our family would have Christmas there, Thanksgivings. She had her nopales in the back. She would always just go out and cut them down and make salads out of them. My grandmother is definitely the matriarch of our family. My parents, our house was across the street. And then me and Javi got married right after high school.\u201d \u201cMy husband\u2019s getting me a cookie.\u201d \u201cMe and Javi had talked a lot about having kids in the future. Finally, after 15 years of being married, we were in a good place. It was so exciting to find out that we were pregnant. We remodeled our whole house. We were really preparing. My grandmother and my mom, they were like, crying, and they were like, so excited.\u201d \u201cLiz!\u201d \u201cI had this vision for her, of how she would grow up, the experiences maybe she would have experiencing my grandmother\u2019s house as it was. We wanted her to have her childhood here. But all of our preparation went out the window in the matter of a few hours.\u201d \u201cAnd we\u2019re like, \u2018What do we do?\u2019 And then we get a phone call. And it was Liz\u2019s uncle. He was like, \u2018Hey, come to my house. We have a room ready for you.\u2019\u201d \u201cIn my more immediate family, nine people lost their homes, so it was about 13 people in the house at any given point for the first three months of the fire. It was a really hard time. We had to figure out insurance claim forms, finding a new place to live, the cost of rebuilding \u2014 will we be able to afford it? Oh my gosh, we must have looked at 10 rentals. The experience of motherhood that I was hoping to have was completely different. Survival mode is not how I wanted to start. \u201cHi, Robin.\u201d \u201cRobin \u2014 she was really stressed out. \u201cShe\u2019s over it.\u201d \u201cOur stress was radiating towards Robin. I feel like she could feel that.\u201d \u201cThere was just no place to lay her safely, where she could be free and not stepped over by a dog or something. So she was having issues gaining strength. So she did have to go to physical therapy for a few months to be able to lift her head.\u201d \u201cOne more, one more \u2014 you can do it.\u201d \u201cAll the stress and the pain, it was just too much.\u201d \u201cThen Liz got really sick.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t stop throwing up for five hours. Javi immediately took me to the E.R. They did a bunch of tests and figured out it was vertigo, likely stress-induced. It felt like, OK, something has to slow down. I can\u2019t just handle all of it myself all the time. My mom is so amazing and my grandmother, they really took care of us in a really wonderful way. So \u2014 yeah.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ve been able to get back on our feet. \u201cGood high-five.\u201d \u201cI think it has changed how I parent. I\u2019m trying to shed what I thought it would be like, and be open to what\u2019s new. Robin is doing much better. She\u2019s like standing now and trying to talk. She says like five words already. Even if it\u2019s not exactly home for Robin, I wanted to have those smells around. You walk in and it smells like home. For us, it\u2019s definitely tamales. My grandmother\u2019s house is not being rebuilt. I can tell she\u2019s so sad. \u201cLet me just grab a piece of this.\u201d \u201cSo right now, where Javi\u2019s standing is the front. One bedroom there, here in the middle, and Robin\u2019s bedroom in the corner. My grandma will live with us versus across the street, which is silver linings. Yeah, and we did make space for a garden for her.\u201d \u201cWhat are you seeing? What do you think? What do you think, Robin?\u201d \u201cThe roots of Altadena \u2014 even though they\u2019re charred \u2014 they\u2019re going to be stronger than before.\u201d \u201cHow strong you can be when something like this happens, I think is something that\u2019s really important for her to take on. And that I hope Altadena also takes on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSo, my daughter, Robin, was born Jan. 5, 2025.\u201d \u201cHi, baby. That\u2019s you.\u201d \u201cWhen I first saw her,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":505998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,4761,49690,4759,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,4757,78635,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-505997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fatherhood","10":"tag-la-wildfires","11":"tag-motherhood","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-parenting","19":"tag-tamale","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115870504401899587","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}