April 2006 Archives

It was a stay-at-home weekend, as both Azure and Emelyn have a cough-and-cold combo that’s been pretty rough. (Emmie had some sniffles in Rome, but the doctors think she caught another virus right after, and it’s been way worse the second time around.) Both were running fevers earlier in the weekend, and Azure had to get up throughout the night to feed Emmie, who’s eating in smaller doses. Not easy.

On a happier note, staying in gave me a chance to go through the hour of tape we shot in Rome, and make a 6-minute movie out of it. I’m starting to understand why family home videos are so maligned- I dumped 13 gigabytes of footage onto Azure’s Powerbook, and we still had a hard time finding clips where the shaky camera didn’t leave the viewer seasick, or where my own bubbling, asinine commentary managed to achieve the same effect.

Anyhoo. Here’s the goods:

Alrighty, then. Pulling into King’s Cross as I type; so ends the nice part of Monday morning. I strongly suspect this’ll be another Week Of Pain at work - so see you Saturday!

And what a skip, hop, and a jump that was…

We’re back from Rome, which was as great as ever. Ditto for Emelyn, who hit the Italians with a shock-and-awe charm offensive so big it deserved State Department funding. (I’m sure Emmie would’ve toned down the maximum-wattage cuteness if she’d realized that nearly every Italian man, woman, and child seemed to think she was our darling boy. The multitudes kept stopping in their tracks to say “Ciao Bello!” to her - not quite the same as “Ciao Bella”.)

Anyhow, it was a fine time, and thanks to a few years’ worth of Starwood Points, the whole affair was a mighty luxurious free ride, to boot. We stayed on Via Veneto, in a hotel that was palatial in style and scale. Emelyn, for her part, quickly discovered she had more space to crawl around than she does at home, and promptly went nuts venturing from the bathroom to the bedroom and back again.

The clear highlight of the trip from her perspective was the hotel’s bathroom scale, which she joyously clambered on every two minutes. A bit obsessive, perhaps, but still a better fixation than her very first object of desire, namely, the cable that dangled from the plasma TV screen. She’s her dad’s daughter, for sure - Emelyn started pulling and yanking on that bit of high-priced technology about 30 seconds after we first entered the room - but Azure and I quickly jerry-rigged a Grand Barricade that kept her from the electrics.

We didn’t spend the entire time in the hotel, of course — we pushed across most of the Centro Storico in our five days there. For Azure and I, the trip was prioritized solely along culinary lines, and we hit pretty much every target on our list. I’m proud to report that Emelyn’s first pasta was from Da Tonino’s (the staff there not only recognized us, but gave me the kiss-kiss) and her first bite of pizza was equally proper, coming from Pizzeria Da Baffeto. Nuthin’ but the best for my girl.

Food and caffe aside, it was a surprisingly mellow trip. Azure and I both went to bed at 8pm or so every night, since Em’s crib blocked the door - no in and out privileges for either parent. The Easter holiday also meant that a lot of the city was closed. We spent Easter Sunday lunching and lounging in the Villa Borghese with some friends who run a hostel in Rome, and wound up splurging on room service later that night, as every restaurant outside the hotel was shut down or full up. (Pity the Starwood points didn’t cover that doozy of a bill.)

Sleeping in is never an option, anymore, but in Rome the mornings were still infinitely more civil than the workweek here. The most treasured part of my day was rolling out of bed, grabbing Emelyn, and heading down the block to a Bar for a morning cappuccino. (It was also a chance to learn just how fast Emelyn’s become — she swiped my very first cappuccino in Rome right off the bar, and sent the full cup clattering to the floor. But that also taught me how carrying a baby is like wearing a VIP pass in Italy; the staff were ludicrously gracious about the whole affair.)

What else? We squeezed in multiple visits to the saints — San Eustachio for coffee, San Crispino for gelato. Never went shopping, really, except for a brief look inside La Cicogna near the Spanish Steps, where we saw a Burberry dress for infants being hawked for a mere 275 Euro. (Not Emelyn’s size, I’m afraid.) Managed to visit Lo Zozzone for sandwiches made on top of pizza bianca right out of the oven, and ate deep-fried zucchini flowers at an Hostaria in the Jewish ghetto. Can’t complain.

That’s all I have to tell. Though I should add one note, for the record: Getting there and back was not half the fun. Emelyn had sniffles and a cough for most of the trip, and the plane ride there was hard. Going back was worse - first, poverina vomited in the taxi, then Azure and I aged a few years as we almost missed the plane. Once aboard, Emelyn pretty much screamed at any point when she wasn’t read the ‘Are You My Mother?’ book. She definitely won the Worst Baby On The Plane Award going home; not much else I can say except that she’s one for superlatives. (Plus, she’s got a very good excuse - since Rome, she seems to have picked up a secondary infection that has left her totally miserable, now.) Overall, the travelling bit was a far cry from our last trip stateside, where Emelyn behaved so very nicely that our kind neighbors on the plane actually sent Emmie a pair of booties from New Zealand a few weeks afterwards. But that’s a story unto itself…

Must. Stay. Focused.

That’s my mantra, this week — I’m multitasking more than ever. (7 product launches in 8 countries in 4 weeks, gah!). Making things worse (or better, just depends when you ask) is the fact that Azure, Emelyn, and I plan to punch out on Wednesday evening and head to Rome for a long Easter weekend. I can’t believe how much we’re all looking forward to this - 5 full days as a family sounds pretty unreal, right now.

Plus, it’s Rome, of all places. I’m clutching plenty of joy in my life, these days, but Rome remains an unrequited love, and leaving the place still pangs me more than I ought admit. As to how that crumbling, congested wreck of a city ever managed to shift the orbit of my life so many degrees, I have no idea. Nor do I know just how long we’ll keep circling it, from afar.

Course, it’s all different this time ‘round. Azure and I know the Centro Storico like the backs of our hands; either of us could plot you a course across the city that minimizes distance travelled while maximizing gelaterias en-route; knowledge like that dies hard.

Thing is, we’ve never done it with a stroller. (And nevermind a baby.) It’s not going to be easy. Hell, the thought of merely crossing the street in Rome just struck fear deep into my heart.

The trick, you see, to asserting pedestrian rights in Italy is to conspicuously not look towards oncoming traffic. Should you foolishly glance at a car barreling towards you, and they see you see them, man, there’s no way they’re slowing down. (They know you’re not that dumb.) No, in Italy, what you’ve got to do is to boldly and confidently step out into the middle of the road, and in a manner that indicates you are either (A) suicidal or (B) lack any peripheral vision whatsoever. In this case, drivers will slam on their brakes, afraid they might dent their cinquecento, and you’re golden. (An easy way to visualize all this is to harken back to the Indiana Jones movie where he blindly steps onto the invisible bridge - it’s exactly the same sort of ‘leap of faith’ pose you need for stepping off the curb.)

So I’m supposed to do that with a Bugaboo? Talk about raising the ante.

Then, of course, there’s the whole eating-and-drinking thing. Let’s be frank, shall we — Azure and I are not planning on visiting many museums and churches over Easter - this trip is all about precision-targeted raids at Pizzeria Da Baffeto’s, Pizzeria ai Marmi, Café San Eustachio, Gelateria di San Crispino, Da Tonino’s et cetera. They say the Italians love i bambini, but I don’t recall seeing a lot of high chairs and sippy cups in any of these spots. I can happily say that Emelyn remains pretty well-behaved in public, but still, we’re going to have to make a lot of judgement calls on whether or not our presence at a restaurant is, erm, appropriate.

Roma, ci vediamo subito. In the meantime, I should get back to work…

One of the crazier curveballs that parenting has thrown at me, so far, is that it keeps getting progressively more fun. I’m mixing baseball metaphors, I know, but it’s a whole different ballgame now that Emelyn will crawl half-ways across the house to sit at my feet. Newborns are lovely (I’m already a tad nostalgic), but in the last few weeks Emelyn has become an absolute hoot to be with. She’s good company.

This was a good weekend. It was just the regular rigamarole for the most part (helllooo Grafton Centre), though the three of us had some bonus fun spec’cing out backpacks. The weather is finally turning, here, so we’ve been debating whether to buy one of those child-carrier packs for our jaunts around Cambridgeshire and our upcoming Easter in Rome.

Emelyn’s reaction at being hoisted up for the first time was actually a pretty good one - her little head bobbled in almost every direction, just trying to take it all in. That said, she started whimpering a few minutes later. Suppose it was a lot to deal with, all at once. Anyhow, we tried a few more packs later on and she seemed to enjoy ‘em thoroughly. Guy at the store said most kids flat-out wail the first time they’re strapped into a pack - bet that’ll kill a sale.

Other than that, well, there’s not much to say. The Daily Grind is, once again, on a ‘coarse’ setting, but hey, Friday is already one day closer than it was yesterday…

Okeydoke, here’s some more footage from the videocamera, since the Nikon is busted:

A fast edit for a fast baby — here’s another crawling video: