For 364 days a year, we're Guatemalan. On March 17th, we celebrate our Irish heritage. As a bilingual and bicultural family, we focus on keeping the minority culture alive in our home on a daily basis--speaking Spanish, eating Guatemalan food, having a wardrobe of traje tipico, and traveling to and from Guatemala as frequently as we can.  But because we focus so much on instilling our children with their Hispanic roots, I want them to know the fabric of our family's history is actually woven with thread from all over the globe. The US is often referred to as a "melting pot," as the majority of families can trace their heritage through immigration, albeit some further back generations than others.  I'm Scotch-Irish-English--my dad's side of the family is originated in England and Scotland, and my mother's side of the family is from Ireland and England. We can trade my maternal great-grandfather's family back to the Mayflower, and my maternal great-gran

  I’d like to take a moment and share what an impact Jane Cohen DeHaven has had on our family, because I know we are not alone and that she has done so much not only for my family, but all the families whose lives she has touched in Framingham and beyond.  My daughter has been participating in Jane's Early Childhood Alliance of Framingham programming since she was nine-months-old and we joined the Baby Talk group at the Framingham Public Library. I was immediately drawn in by Jane’s no-nonsense approach to parenting groups, and the way she leads by example, showing new and seasoned parents how to interact with our children in ways that help their little minds expand and grow. She held us as caregivers responsible for participating in the group alongside our children, while also building us up--filling our toolbox with nursery rhymes with movements, early literacy strategies, and developmentally-appropriate activities--and making us feel we are doing a great job, no matter how overw

When we went to the library in February, there was a display of books celebrating Black History Month. One picture book in particular caught my eye, because it was about a famous astronaut, Mae C. Jemison. She is renowned as the first black woman to travel into space, and while her story as a trailblazer is inspirational, the reason why her book caught my eye is because of her name. Mae Among the Stars. Mae is not a common first name, and I had not ever read a book where the main character was named Mae. So I grabbed it and added it to our checkout pile, because I thought it would be fun to read a book with the kids about a main character with the same name as Mami. Later as we were perusing the Spanish books section, I saw a bilingual book titled La Manta de Maya/Maya’s Blanket and I thought, how perfect!  Then I decided we needed a book with the name Mateo in the title. That proved to be a bit more difficult, but after searching our library network, the librarian found one book tit