Thursday, April 26, 2007

Italy: an overview

I just started trying to write a trip report and it's just going to take too long. So I thought I'd write a brief summary of where we went and hope that would satisfy people for now.

Places we went:
  • Florence - Duomo, the Duomo Museum, the Bapistry, the Accademia, Santa Croce, the Uffizi Gallery, the Ponte Vecchio, the Medici Chapels, the Straw Market, the Piazza dei Signorina, the Uffizi Loggia, and our own Piazza dei Annunziata.
  • Vernazza in the Cinque Terre
  • Pisa - the Field of Miracles, but we just looked at the outsides of the Leaning Tower and the Duomo before skedaddling. We didn't like Pisa.
  • Tuscany: San Giminano, Siena, Monteriggiano, Pienza, Volterra. We went into the Duomos of most places.
  • Rome: the Campo dei Fiori, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Piazza Novena, the Colosseum, the Forum, Palentine Hill, the Borghese Gallery, St. Peter's, and the Vatican Museum, including the Sistine Chapel.
Things we learned:
  • Italians love babies. They passionately love babies. They shower babies with affection. A ate it up.
  • Carrying your baby gets you special treatment. Places with ridiculous amounts of stairs sent us to the elevator; we were waved through security checkpoints and X-ray machines. I was tapped firmly on the shoulder at the Sistine Chapel and told to follow a security guard. I thought I was in trouble. He walked me over to a bench (most of the Sistine is standing room only aside from benches in one corner), unseated a man, and sat me down.
  • Most Italians have not seen a baby carried in a wrap and so they're fascinated by it and thrilled to talk to the baby face-to-face. A now smiles when you say, "Ciao, bambino!" to him.
  • Packing light is a wonderful thing. We had two carry-on sized bags and a day bag, plus the car seat. That was grand for traveling. I wore a shirt/skirt combo or a dress every day and that was fine.
  • Those mesh packing cubes that seem like an incredible waste of money are fabulous. Everyone had a cube for their clothes: me, C, A. When you're going from town to town pretty regularly, it keeps you organized and makes the repacking easier. We had some other things in ordinary Ziplock plastic bags, and they were too slippery to make for good packing.
  • At some point, you have to stop swabbing everything your baby touches with an antibacterial wipe.
It was amazing to have a baby with us in Italy. In the US, I often feel like I'm apologizing for having my baby with me unless it is a patently kid-friendly place, like the Zoo. He yells or squeals in a restaurant and we've got him out of the room quickly.

In Italy, it was like everyone was related to us. Everyone (with one exception in the entire country) was thrilled to see him. He yelled in museums and churches and people still cooed and called him beautiful, asked about his weight, his teething. In Italy, they expected babies to be babies and didn't care when he made noise. It was amazing how much that added to my enjoyment of life. I'm not suggesting the US goes baby-crazy, but it was certainly a refreshing two weeks.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Bellisimo piccolino!

We are home and currently suffering from sleeplessness. This is what happens when you go across nine time zones.

Everything was fabulous; Italians love, love, love babies and they loved, loved, loved A. I felt like royalty: crowds parted, people cooed and waved, people on buses hopped up like they'd been stuck with pins to give me and A a seat, guards ushered us to private elevators and seats in every museum we went to.

I've gone from thinking you must be crazy to take a baby to Italy to thinking you absolutely must take a baby to Italy to experience Italy at its best. Trip report will follow once I've downloaded pictures; my 4 gig card was insufficient and we had to buy another gig for Rome.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Packing packing packing

I am pleased to report that we are mostly (90%) packed for Italy and we don't leave until Wednesday morning. The luggage count still stands at two carry-on bags and a small backpack, plus car seat. Please compare to the luggage count for Christmas to be awed by the improvement in our mad packing skills.

Saturday I had a pedicure, then we ran around doing last-minute trip stuff, like getting a couple new toys for A for the plane and getting a self-stuffing jacket for C.

Easter was low-key with J&T but surprisingly good: ham, mashed potatoes, broiled pineapple with brown sugar. Sunday morning, A woke us up horribly: pulling on hair, crying, yelling. Then he waved at us for the first time. That kid knows how to ladle out a little sugar with his crankiness to keep us from BBQ-ing him.

Today's plan: swim class and last-minute errands like getting a key made for the pet sitter, picking up minor things, and stopping our mail service. If we can just finish our taxes before we leave the country, we'll be set.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

The Poop Post

You've been warned.

We met a pet sitter, went to the Zoo, had a happy morning, yadda yadda. A is particularly smiley and happy today.

Then A pooped more than I think he's ever pooped. It was not contained by the diaper or the onesie (Hanna freaking Andersson, of course, because he only has blow-outs in Hanna freaking Andersson, not the cheap stuff) and was barely contained by the pants. It was the first time he's been so filthy that I just put him in the bathtub instead of trying to wipe him up.

We had a bath, cleaned him up, and fifteen minutes later we have another poop blow-out (in Old Navy, not Hanna).

Fine. I wipe him up, get him dressed in outfit number 3 (resale, so we're safe, right?), and we play. He's standing and teething on everything and is happy. We play Superman, where I hold him over my head horizontally and cheer him on. He's laughing and giggling and boy is the world a fabulous place when he's laughing.

He spits up all over my face.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Travel Crib and Sleep Deprivation

Happy April! There's nothing like April to make you say, "Wow, we're leaving the country in less than two weeks; we better get a move on."

We actually completed a dry-run of packing this weekend. At this time, it looks like we'll be traveling with two carry-on bags and a day bag (and no more). Well, the car seat, but we think we can hook that over our rolling bag.

Most of our clothes and toiletries are all within one bag, if you can believe that. The other bag is mostly consumed by the travel crib. We've used the travel crib with middling success when we went to Denver last month and began having the debate about its usefulness Saturday.

"Let's try it out," C said, and I said okey-dokey, knowing full well that A has been sleepless this week and it's about the worst time to try a sleep experiment.

Except that he slept brilliantly in the travel crib.

So we tried it again last night, and again, he slept soundly and peacefully in the travel crib.

Now the travel crib is definitely going.