Although it’s our second trip to Seattle in the last couple months, this is notably the first time we’ve flown with two kids in tow. Preflight logistics turned out to be more daunting than the travel itself, though I did get a moment of excitement when (as Murphy would have it) our plane encountered a wee patch of turbulence halfway through Tamtam’s airplane-lavatory diaper change. Seeing the seatbelt light illuminate was like hearing a starter pistol fire — I’ve never wielded baby wipes with greater speed and dexterity, nor snapped shut a onesie with such machine-like precision and efficiency.

Anyhow, we’ve been keeping occupied with trips to the playground, zoo, puppet show, and other demographically-appropriate destinations. Most of all, we’ve just been happily hanging out with friends here. Which is why we came up in the first place.

Two caveats: First, it’s been five years since Az and I lived in Rome; two since our last visit. Second, we were mostly vegetarian back then, so our dining staples tended to be pasta, contorni, and pizza. Which is not exactly a limiting diet, in Italy.

Around Piazza Navona:

My favorite lunches in town are both near Piazza Navona: first, there’s Lo Zozzone, which makes awesome sandwiches on hot, straight-from-the-oven pizza bianca that’s sliced to order and stuffed with ingredients of your choosing. The breasola, arugula, and parmesan is particularly popular; I’d generally go the tapenade-veggie-cheese route, and sometimes order a small second of nutella-ricotta for dessert. Best to arrive both hungry and patient, the lunchtime queue can be a bit of a jostle.

Even better is Da Tonino’s, which is officially called Trattoria Antonio Bassetti. I’m not at all sure if it has a sign, yet, and while I know they upgraded the decor when I visited a few years back (interior lighting used to be a couple of raw fluorescents) it’s a humble-looking place. The food isn’t fancy by any measure — it’s the simple pastas that shine here — but the taste of it all is stupendous and superlative. The pasta melanzane (eggplant) and pasta broccoli are my two favorites; in a perfect world their pasta fagiole would be spirited away somewhere safe to serve as the specimen against which all others should aspire. Check out the carciofi and brocolli romano (perfectly saute’ed with chili flakes and olive oil) as side dishes.

As for dinner, well, it’s gotta be Baffetto’s, right up the street. Look, there’s a reason this place is in every single guidebook: Baffeto’s is very, very good and very, very Roman pizza, with a two-dimensionally-thin crust that’s crunchily croccante, baked perilously close to the fire, and topped with a type of grated fresh mozarella that I’m convinced is the key to it all. (Order the Insalata Burina as an appetizer to sample the cheese raw; I’m personally torn between that and a starter bruschetta every time I go.) Be prepared for gruff service and a wait outside, with plenty of tourists and crowd-control all’italiana. It may seem gauche, but arriving early in the evening (like, ten minutes before they open) makes for a wayyy more civil experience. Plus, you’re more likely to get a seat downstairs where you can watch the two cooks work the pizza oven, which I always like. Contingency plan: if Baffeto’s won’t work, and you can’t make it to Trastevere, run with Da Francesco, around the corner at Piazza del Fico.

There’s also Da Alfredo & Ada, which is just down the street from Baffeto’s and Da Tonino. Another sign-less joint, I’d always referred to this place as the Three Sisters, since it’s run by three older women who fuss around each other like siblings. (They’re not.) It’s a tiny restaurant with a humble menu — in fact, don’t even kid yourself about a menu at all, the schtick here is that the ladies will serve you whatever they feel like serving you. Last time we went, I watched Ada scold a group for not eating their veggie sides; she promptly pulled them off their table and gave them to ours. Behave yourself — you’ll get some cookies after dinner if you do. (Check the great post and photos at tastingmenu for a second opinion.)

Around the Pantheon:

The best coffee in Rome (IMHO) is Caffe San Eustachio. And given that the queue at the bar sometimes goes three deep, it appears others feel the same. Il Gran Caffe is the paragon of espresso shots, though I swear there’s some cheating going on — the crema on top is so wonderfully fluffy that I suspect they’re doing something when they stir in the sugar for you. (A note on that: when the barista barks “zuccherato?”, he’s asking if you want sugar, and the answer is yes.) If you don’t believe me, check the weird metal guard they’ve put in to block the view of exactly what happens under the espresso machine. I know I’m not the only one who thinks something’s going on (a teensy hint of hot cream, or bicarbonate of soda, maybe?), but whatever it is, it’s good.

Also good at San Eustachio is Il Gran Cappuccino, a hefty-in-the-hand cappuccino that’s massive by Italian standards but seems just about right by me. (For more thoughts on dainty Roman cappucini, see my old post here.)

Caffe Tazza D’Oro is nearby, too, and while the decor is sweet and the place is something of a destination, I can’t say the espresso struck me as being notably better than anywhere else (in Rome, that is).

Gelato is the other staple that’s abundant around the Pantheon. Like the Trevi fountain, I think the Pantheon looks better at night, and always worth a minor course-correction when taking an evening stroll. Ditto for a few of the cremerias in the area — there’s La Cremeria right on the piazza, and the venerable Giolitti nearby. Della Palma wins on quantity (but not quality) and is wonderful to look at; it’s an OK place if you’ve got some kids in tow.

Here’s some brief footage from a sunny Sunday afternoon last week, as Emmie got a chance to play with all the ladybugs out back.

Emelyn had a little surprise waiting when she woke from her nap on Easter Sunday: a little (very little) egg hunt in the backyard. We actually wound up doing it three times, as Emmie enjoyed it more with each go; she’s been talking about eggs all morning long today, too.

We only ran into one problem, which stung us pretty bad: the whole idea of ‘lunch at 2:30, dinner between 11 and midnight’ doesn’t mesh well with a strictly-sleep-scheduled baby who naps promptly at 2 and needs to be in bed by 8. We wound up foraging a lot of cold tapas and chocolate & churros, which ain’t half-bad, though the foodie in me quietly wept a few times. (Comment from Azure: “Quietly? I don’t know if you can use the word quietly…”)

‘Twas also a learning experience about what to expect from a kid at attractions. Valencia has a pretty awesome aquarium (L’Oceanografic) and a small zoo in the city gardens, and Az and I were both super-excited about taking Em to these, since she loves animals so much. (Without exaggeration, I’d guess that 40% or so of her current vocabulary is animal names.)

Yes — Emmie had a good time at both the zoo and the aquarium, no doubt. But while Azure and I had debated whether Emmie would enjoy the penguins more than the giraffes, etc. etc., we hadn’t anticipated that the show-stealing attractions would be the aquarium’s crowd-management equipment, and a particular 3-inch-high curb outside the zoo’s Primate House. I mean, Emelyn seemed to like the fish, and all, but it became obvious that she’d have been even happier in a room full of retractable belt barriers and their rope-and-post brethren. As for the curb, well, it was sized ‘juuuust right’ for Emmie to step up and down, and down and up.

This is all on tape, of course. Here’s a video — click through to Vimeo for HD:

Anyhoo: there’s a ton of stuff to love about Valencia — the noise of Las Fallas, the Syd Mead stylings of the City of Arts and Sciences, the constant availability of freshly-fried churros, and so on. My favorite, though, has got to be the Parc Gulliver in the river gardens. Pretty much the coolest ‘concept playground’ I’ve ever seen, it’s a gigantic Gulliver that makes all the children playing on it perfectly Lilluputian in proportion. The folds of Gulliver’s coats are slides and steps; the ropes tying him down are made for climbing up, etc. Genius. (Here’s Emmie and I on it, and here’s a satellite view from Google Maps.)

The Turia river gardens are great, overall — apparently the old river Turia flooded in 1957, nearly destroying the city, so that the city fathers wound up diverting the entire thing elsewhere, and created this long, narrow, meandering park in its place. The landscape changes every few blocks — different fountains, little orchards, bike rental shops, grassy knolls and cafés as you stroll along. Urban planning done well, which you rarely see.

And that’s pretty much it. I suppose it’s worth noting, just for our own memory’s sake, that we actually did run into another major problem, and one which didn’t relate to restuarant opening hours. Problem was that Emmie didn’t sleep. Something about being out of her crib, or hating the hotel’s playpen, I guess. It seriously felt like raising a newborn again — we were up almost every hour to console and coax her back to sleep in our bed. (Although when she was a newborn, she just mewed or cried, and didn’t start jumping up and down wildly in bed.) Hence the quip in the opening line about being ‘recovered’ from the trip.

Neat city, Valencia. More soon.

She’s figured out that she can mash the buttons on our phone so that, with some luck, it will play back whatever old messages are hanging around. She’s scared of how loud the speaker is (it’s loud) so she generally makes a run for it the moment the phone starts its playback routine. Then she’ll stand back and admire her handiwork.

Anyhow, she was awfully pleased to hear Jami on the machine today. Kept playing a message from Jami again and again, saying, “Auntie! Auntie!”. She probably did it four or five times in a row — we caught a few of ‘em on video.

First off, the biggest snow in London for fifteen years saw airports close, trains delayed, and me stay home Thursday - and all that after a mere 5 inches of the white stuff landed overnight. Just a light dusting by most standards, but hey, I’m not going to pass up a free snow day with E.

I spent a lot less time than I wanted with Emmie on Thursday and, frankly, for the last couple of weeks as I prepared for a significant launch at work. (‘Twas the bundle-launch of Gmail open signups, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Gmail for mobile.) It’s something of a shame because she’s developing so rapidly now - new words and opinions every day. My personal favourites are ‘mail’ (mail), ‘whaatch’ (rabbit), and ‘yellow’ (yellow). As for how ‘whaatch’ came to mean rabbit, I have no idea, but she says it all the time.

Anyhow, it’s 11pm on Friday night, now, and I’m slumped in my seat on the commuter line after a well-timed ‘team-building’ event that consisted of a trip to the Tate modern to ride the ballyhooed slide installation - a twisting, curving five-story slide that’s just as fun as it sounds. That was then followed by drinks at the Absolut Ice Bar, where everything between the floor and the ceiling is made of ice (stemware, too), plus dinner at some hoity-toity Moroccan joint. Probably a normal Friday night for a Londoner, but coming from the ‘burbs, it was a real treat.

The plan, of course, allows for Azure to get her payback on Sunday, with an all-day escape to London on her own. And I’m looking forward to a full day with Emmie. Sure, there’s that niggling fear that she’ll suddenly freak out without Azure around for such a long stretch (since that normally happens… when?) and who knows how I’ll keep her mind off of Bod/Boohbah these days (she can repeat those words for hours) but we’ll manage fine.

For now, TGIF.

An unremarkable lunch at the Maltings, some time wandering around a cold cathedral, and a long stretch of me pushing sleepy Em around the town square whilst Az shopped at Waitrose.

Not much to write about, really, but somehow it all came together perfectly. Plus, I got to play with the new videocamera some more. Click through to see in HD:

It’s all fun and games until somebody gets cold hands:

Emelyn, though, is otherwise unfazed by all the location changes. This is partly because she’s discovered a new foundation that she can build her life around, namely, Cheerios.

In fact, “Sheerhoah!, sheerhoah!” is pretty much all she says of late, and in this tone of voice that’s half-ecstatic, half-imperative. She’s got a Tupperware dispenser chock-full of cereal that now gets lugged anywhere she moves. Of course, her dexterity is a tad limited, so half the Cheerios drop to the floor en route to her mouth. In other words, it’s like having a crazy Cheerios-spraying machine in the house, not unlike some wayward Roomba that sheds breakfast cereal all day instead of cleaning it up.

The craziest thing, though, is Emmie’s wild-eyed zeal for proselytizing these Cheerios. She’ll happily walk half-way across the house, Tupperware banging on the walls, just to wave a Cheerio in front of your face and bark, “Sheerhoah!” at you. Disconcerting, perhaps, yet surprisingly effective: I’ve had two bowls of Cheerios in the last two days, for the first time in years…

Emmie was pretty good on the flight over — she slept just long enough for me to sneak in a viewing of ‘Talledaga Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby’, a film which seemed expressly designed for airplane viewing. Her brief kip wasn’t much, though, and Em had gone completely nutty by the time we finally landed. I’ve never seen her so punchy, wobbly and manic as when she toddled her way out of the plane last Saturday.

We’d gate-checked our stroller, and wound up waiting outside the jetway for a good fifteen minutes. There was an old security guard on duty, and you could tell that Em had him just a bit conflicted — she was cute as a button, but every one of her behaviors (an inability to walk a straight line without falling, loud and insistent babbling, the undue interest in pushing the airport wheelchair, and her refusal to surrender her beverage container) matched the classic ‘Problem Passenger’ profile.

Words (with pronounciation): mama jason/queen elizabeth - (da-dah) woman/jami - (aunt-ie!) opa - (upah) out - (oww) blueberry - (be-be) Uggo the cat - (googoo) bra - (bar) moon - (moomoo) baby apple/pineapple - (abu) cheese - (chish) Bod/TV - (bah) poopoo no emmie - (em-mee) yes/yeah - (weah!) up - (up/uhh/crying) hot - (breathing in) cold - (burrr) eyes - (eyeee) nose - (nono)

Sign-language only: tree flower milk baby bird ball cat butterfly kite bubble all done more please thank you sleep bath bear mouse water eat book flower tree book baby

When I was a boy, I spent quite a few summers in Germany, visiting Oma, my maternal grandmother. Those are all happy memories, though like most childhood recollections, they’re fragmented, now: I can picture Oma’s tiny refrigerator, Opa’s metal-framed recliner, my Polizei Playmobil set, the miniature boiler above the bath, and a million other details. People and faces are harder to recall, although there’s one particular image of Oma at her stove, and a memory of my Opa in his chair (doodling mustaches on faces in a magazine) that still seem clear and right to me.

But the memory that matters for this particular tale is of a book - “Tales From Moominvalley”, by Tove Jansson. Somebody, probably Mom, bought it at Regensburg’s English bookstore. Moomin books are justly famous in their native Finland, and the children’s series eventually migrated throughout the UK and much of Europe (and Japan, as we shall see), but I don’t think it ever made an impact in the States.

I loved the Moomins, though. In particular, I liked Snufkin, who wears a dirty green hat and smokes a pipe.

Who is Snufkin? Hard to say with precision, but he’s a sincere fellow, who occasionally wanders into the Moomin stories to help the small Moomin creatures get their problems sorted. I wanted to be like Snufkin back then, and maybe I still do: he’s incorrigibly itinerant, unfailingly humble, surprisingly attuned to the natural world, and, most of all, thoughtful in how he deals with others. Tove Jansson, who wrote and illustrated the Moomin books, drew him like so:

Good guy.

Now, fast-forward twenty-odd years, and spin the planet to Tokyo, where Azure and I are strolling through quiet backstreets, getting purposely lost. And who should we find fifteen minutes later, but Snufkin, standing at attention on a junk-filled card table outside some ramshackle toyshop. It wasn’t quite Snufkin as Tove Janssen drew him, not quite, but a Japan-ized anime version that was almost more adorable.

That particular Snufkin was a chokinbako, or piggy-bank, and I simply had to have him. And for a fast 1,000 yen, I did.

Now, at those prices, we couldn’t justify buying the whole Moomin set on display, though I’m guessing we both secretly wanted to. The one figure Azure really wanted, but stoically declined to purchase, was Little My.

See, Azure had flipped through my old Moomin books some years earlier, taking an immediate fancy to another character, the aforementioned Little My. Strange, some might say, as Little My is not at all nice. Not mean or wicked, either. Little My is simply selfish and mischievous. She is small and cute and the books say that she fits inside a milk jug, but still, she is trouble:

See?

OK. Speed along for a couple years more. Azure and I are settled, now, and living in Berkeley. And while things might seem happy on the surface, the two of us have become preoccupied with a curious regret. My Snufkin bank seems sad standing on its own, and Azure quietly pines for the Little My that we never bought in Japan. We’ve had an active eBay search for ‘moomin bank’ and keyword variants for months.

Trouble, trouble, trouble.

And then, one fine day, she appears. We bid. We bid fast, we bid high. We bid with a total disregard for sense and sensibility. On eBay, you see, that’s what it takes to win. We won.

This is almost the end of the story.

Snufkin was indeed joined on our mantelpiece by Little My, just as you’d expect. The union of those two plastic piggybanks, for whatever reason, meant a lot to us. (Recognize ‘em, yet? They’ve stood side-by-side on the masthead of jasoncook.com for years.)

Which brings us to the present. Mantelpieces have come and gone, continents swapped out from under our feet, but Snufkin and Little My always stay in arm’s reach, most recently occupying a spot on the banister outside Emmie’s room.

There’s been a change, though, of late. They move. Now you’re more likely to find either (or both) in Emmie’s hands. Little My, of course, is the favorite. Trouble times two.

About a week ago, Azure called me at work. “I can’t find Little My”, she said, which hardly fazed me, since Little My is rarely where you’d expect her - hiding behind the DVD player, perhaps, or lying on the brick floor of the conservatory. Thanks to Emmie, she gets around quite a bit.

But, no, Azure explains, Little My is gone gone, last spotted in Emmie’s arms days ago as she was being pushed in her pram about town.

Watch Emmie with her toys sometime, and suddenly gone gone seems frighteningly plausible - the more Em loves something, it seems, the more likely she is to drop it from her grasp/pram/crib. It’s a phase, maybe?

Anyhow. We were sad. More than I would care to admit, I know, and ditto for Azure.

That’s almost the end of the story. Life moves on, etcetera. But this time, there’s a happy postscript…

Spin the clocks backward a day or two or four, until you see Azure, carrying a basket, and pushing a pram through the narrow aisles of Al-Amin halal market, Cambridge. It’s the closest grocer to home. It’s also the penultimate stop on a Great Retracing Of Steps that Azure’s been doing in the days since Little My went AWOL. Watch Azure asking the owner, now, against all hope, if he’s seen a funny plastic doll, maybe, one with a trouble-making appearance, just lying around?

“This thing?” he asks, pointing an accusatory finger at Little My, who is sitting proudly on top of his cash register, hands clasped in gleeful mischief.

Something like this:

I made a short video from our trip to Adare, here:

‘Twas Ireland, this time, because twenty-odd of my Cambridge classmates held an unofficial reunion at Adare Manor (county Limerick), and secured us some nearly-decent group rates in lodgings whose price is otherwise the opposite, i.e. quite indecent. Sure, Adare Manor is a stately place, and stately never comes cheap, but those folks specialize in surprising, nay, shockingly high prices — such sums as will prompt a man to spray his mouthful of Lapsang Souchong across the table when the bill is presented.

Needless to say, our precious little Boo-Boo was in her element. And I’m only half-kidding. You see, there’s 847 acres onsite, much of it impeccably landscaped, which means that for every perfectly-manicured box hedge, there is a corresponding bank of white river pebbles laid nearby. And Emmie is really, really fond of pebbles, at the moment.

It was, in fact, impossible to cover any middling distance at Adare Manor without Emelyn suddenly going horizontal in your arms, wee arms clawing through the air, trying desperately to reach the stones crunching underfoot.

Digression: our child is a bona fide squirmer, now; at this point she’s simply perfecting her technique (a combination of going rigid and then quickly relaxing her entire body) in an apparent bid to break the world record for ‘extricating oneself from a parental grasp’. Don’t believe me? You try holding her.

To make a long story short, the wily and wriggly Emelyn spent her posh weekend at Adare sitting on the ground, playing happily with the pebbles. Moving them about, mostly - pebbles that were on the ground were moved to the stairs, pebbles on the stairs were moved into the hedge, and so on.

I could’ve sworn she admired the view, once or twice, though she might just have been scanning for more Irish pebbles. Hard to say.

(Note to self: be sure to add that one to the ledger next time anybody asks, “Where does the time go?”.)

So. In an effort to make sure these days with Em don’t simply bleed together like so many stations whizzing past, allow me to press pause and name some things that are new, of late:

“Uh-oh”. Emmie loves saying this. Imagine a fast, sharp intake of breath, like Emmie wanted to dive underwater, followed by a too-long pause and a long, exhaled, “ohhhhh”. We hear this one over the baby monitor a lot; at nap time, there’s nothing Emmie likes so much as to throw bunny out of the crib, and then say “Uh!….ohhhhh” over and over again.

Selective media consumption. Emelyn’s old pull-any-random-book-and-flip-through-the-pages routine has been supplanted by a more demanding practice: She now pulls specific picture books from the toypile, and proceeds to toddle your way, waving the book at you. Meaning, she wants to be read to, stat. (Or suffer the consequences.)

Crying. See also ‘suffer the consequences’, above. What can I say? Emmie’s more prone to crying these days, because it’s no longer simply about being hungry or tired or teething or hurt. Instead, Emmie has become sharply aware of the Great Injustices in this world, like ‘No Freedom to Chew on Electronics’, ‘Oppression Against Those Who Would Eat iPods’ and ‘Failure of The State To Provide Fundamental Right To be Carried And Held On Demand, Regardless of Whether The State Really Needs Two Free Hands At Just That Moment’. And so on.

Going Owwwwtside. Emelyn’s internalized the ASL sign for ‘more’ to mean ‘I want’, and now she uses it incessantly, along with pointing. One of her most frequent sign-language demands is [I want] / [points to door]. Additionally, she’ll also will say “Owwwhhhht”, meaning outside. A lot of the time, she’s happy enough to go look at some of the nearby flowers, but increasingly, she wants to visit neighbour Helen’s place across the street, where there is a cat and a chair full of plush toys to visit. (And Helen, of course.)

The Hat. Did you see that bit in the latest video where Emelyn’s cruising around the living room wearing her bicycle helmet? Not our idea. Leave the headgear lying around, and next thing you know, there’s Emmie standing in front of you, clutching the pink helmet and wanting it put on. A fashionista, I guess.

4am wakeup. Dude. Emmie. What is up with this one? Please go back to sleeping through the night… please?

Anyhow, the easiest way to describe how we’ve been keeping occupied is to point to the video. Really not much going on, as you can see, but we’re having a good enough time of it:

I think I’ll have to chalk this up as one of the weirder 48 hours in my life — this is an unapologetically business-y business trip, and as such, I haven’t seen much apart from hyper-modern office buildings and exceptionally nice restaurants.

My room, though, is directly on the Bosphorous, and this morning I ate my breakfast right on the water, watching a panoply of tankers, ferries, and yachts ply the channel. And when I got back to the hotel this evening, I had a tiny bit of time left to wander around Bebek — I’d been hoping to find a suitable gift for Emmie, but the closest thing I could spot was a onesie that read, “My other car seat is in a Porsche”.

Had to pass on that one. (If only for strictly factual reasons.)

Dinner was pleasant enough. I needed to avoid a repeat of last night, where I dined awkwardly alone in a very fancy fish restaurant, Poseidon. So tonight I wound up eating a köfte sandwich, instead, from a snack-hut-thing about a block off the main strip (and maybe 15 yards east of McDonald’s). As far as I could tell, this place had everything going for it — harsh flourescent lighting, a group of old men smoking and sipping tea, Rubbermaid furniture, and a flow of bus drivers who kept darting in and running back out clutching hot dogs.

Like I said… ‘twas pleasant enough. I even topped off the meal with a wee dram of Turkish coffee. Though I made the same mistake as I invariably do at Don and Lorna’s, namely, I got greedy and took one sip too many, and hence wound up with a mouthful of coffee grounds. Cleanses the palate, at least.

Anyhow. Home tomorrow AM, and now it’s the weekend. Whoo-hoo!

The best part? On regular weekends, I’ve noticed that Emmie always tends to be more affectionate on Sundays. (Azure’s clued into the same thing.) After my absence during the workweek, I suppose, Saturdays seem a bit strange to her, like she doesn’t quite know what to make of the dude who’s suddenly loafing around the living room. By Sunday, though, she’s figured things out again. Point being, this vacation was like seven straight Sundays. I had Emelyn biting at my ankles and clambering up my knees pretty much the entire time. Good stuff!

And good timing, too: Last week we crossed the threshold between ‘Emelyn Can Walk’ (a few cautious steps here and there) to ‘Emelyn is Walking’ (such that she now prefers it to crawling, half the time). I’d a-been sore had I missed that, and so I’m tickled that I didn’t.

In lieu of a Club Med vacation, our big purchase for the week was a Hamax bike seat, now sitting stately on the back of Azure’s bike. You never know until you try, of course, but turns out that Emmie is a big fan. (She just loathes wearing a bike helmet, is all.)

We made three little trips over the course of the week - first a visit to the Green Dragon in Chesterton, where Emmie saw ducklings; then an outing through Grantchester Meadows to the Rupert Brooke, and finally, a simple ride through Coldham’s Commons, which is a series of fields not far from our house. Cambridgeshire’s geography may be flat and unapologetically pastoral, but it makes for some nice cycle paths.

We did make one trip further afield, to London. There we visited with Jen (who grew up on Waldron Island with Katrina) and Soumaila, and their 5 week old baby, Amara. As Amara is still a very wee and sleepy baby, Emelyn wasn’t all that interested in her, but she was quite captivated with the open/close button on Jen’s DVD player, and all the other blinkenlights near the TV.

The six of us also popped out to Corham’s Fields, just across the street, which is a really lovely children’s park near Russell Square. Emelyn hit another key developmental milestone there, namely, she chased pigeons for the first time in her life. IMHO, it ranked among the cutest things she’s done yet, given that she was toddling around in circles, squealing, with me holding one hand and the other one raised in the air, furiously signing ‘bird, bird, bird’.

That’s mostly it. There were some good pub lunches here and there, a very nice evening out at Cotto for Az and me (thanks, Helen!), and, of course, one big healthy dollop of lazy time for me to fritter away with various Nintendo/Apple/Nikon/Sony-branded electronics.

(* You’ve watched the videos, seen the pictures, read the blog - but did ya know that I also spent the week leading a ragtag band of soldiers in a tactically brilliant, if terribly time-consuming, campaign against the treacherous Black Hole Army? Or that Azure donated some of her own time to aid an Italian plumber and a sapient, anthropomorphic monarchist mushroom joined in a quest to rescue Princess Peach? We are busy, busy people!)

Not the most entertaining featurette, admittedly, but as they say in these parts, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Seriously, though, the kid is crazy about blueberries.

Of course, the beeping keypad on the aforementioned phone is just icing on the cake. Emmie’s definitely clued in to the fact that squeezing the buttons as she’s chewing on the top of the phone creates a pleasing series of tones, and she therefore works the phone much like one would play a clarinet or recorder - top part goes in the mouth, whilst the fingers busily press all the various keys.

A couple of weeks ago, Emelyn actually managed to call 1-1-2, which is the UK equivalent of 9-1-1, and you can bet they rang us right back. (They were understanding about the whole matter, and didn’t send a copper around, if only because they’d heard Azure in the background saying, “Who’s got the phone? Who’s got the phone?” before it hung up.)

We’ve tried to be careful about things since then, but yesterday at about three, I get an oddly-truncated call at the office that wasn’t anything but a few seconds of heavy breathing and strange slobbering noises. Caller ID indicated it was Azure. I think it’s enough to say that I felt quite confident that this was not, in fact, Azure. A subsequent call home confirmed this, a did the telling presence of drool on the ‘redial’ button.

All of which is a roundabout way of coming to this: Call me anytime, Emmie! Because I miss you dearly when I’m at work…

Emmie and I made the best of it this morning, at least — while Azure had a lie-in, I bundled The Boss into the backpack and the two of us jaunted up Mill Road to the ‘Nip In’ market where we grabbed a couple of fresh-from-the-oven croissants. (Emelyn passed on the pastries, having already eaten her peaches-and-apricot breakfast at home. High-fiber’s where it’s at for Emmie this weekend, at least, as she’s needed a little extra something to keep the traffic movin’, if you catch my drift.)

By the time we got home it was 8:45, and time for morning nap. We read a few Oliver Jeffers books, first — I’m a big fan of ‘Lost and Found’, while Em’s mum really likes ‘How To Catch a Star’. Emelyn, of course, is nuts about almost any printed material, so she was an easy audience, and happily turned all the pages and pointed out the protagonists in every picture.

Our Sunday afternoon was equally mellow. The three of us went to the children’s section at Border’s again, since it’s pretty much Emelyn’s favorite hangout. (Emelyn’s big discovery there this time was a plush doll of Beaker, the Muppet.) And then we very briefly went to Cafe Nero, though Emelyn started getting reeeeally fussy, such that our coffee order got changed to ‘take away’ by the time we hit the register. (Emmie apparently hates the sound of milk being steamed.)

Anyhow, if you’re keen, check out the latest video. Emelyn’s always been obsessed with the camera, but we just started realizing the fun you can have by flipping the LCD viewfinder around so it faces out, like the lens. (Basically, you can see her reaction as she sees herself on the screen. Which is pretty adorable, if I do say so meself.)

Emmie is also saying ‘Bobo’, which is one of three words used in her favorite story (‘Hug’, by Jez Alborough). I’m admittedly disappointed that a fictional chimpanzee took priority over ‘Daddy’, but Bobo’s also around the house more. And, as anybody who’s read the book will tell you, Bobo could do with a little attention, anyways.

By the way — the most adorable thing in the world is to see Emelyn make the sign for ‘baby’. Now ‘baby’ is supposed to be a cradle-like thing you do with your arms, but Emmie’s version looks more like the ‘I love you’ sign in ASL, and when I go out on a limb and say it’s the Most Adorable Thing In The World, I’m being totally serious. Biased and unobjective, maybe, but still quite serious.

Ah well. There’s a million little things to report. Emmie’s signing ‘bird’ all the time, though she’s admittedly liberal with its usage (along with the bird in her picture book, she uses it to mean ‘outside’ and ‘tree’, too). She also signs for ‘ball’ and ‘all done’, and I’m betting her next one will be ‘PowerBook G4’.

Emmie increasingly stands on her own, hands-free, but only if she doesn’t actually think about it. (It’s all reminiscent of old Looney Tunes cartoons, where Wile E. Coyote goes running off a cliff, but never actually drops until he looks down.) Emelyn will also walk short distances with a minimally-supportive hand-hold, although the moment she figures out you’re actually encouraging her to walk a bit, she sits down in protest. She’s got her own schedule for this stuff…

Emelyn is also turning mischievous - she can turn on the TV, open a laptop latch (rather impressive, that), and she won’t stop reaching for door handles, either. We’ve started re-arranging some of the furniture and toys into a kind of Victor-Hugo-inspired barricade, in response, and that keeps her from most of the consumer electronics. Baby gates are on order, too.

Well, maybe that isn’t a million things, after all. What to say? Life here just seems to be trucking along like normal; can’t really complain.

The ‘Premrose Fete’ is a tiny affair, really, but with a huge heart. You can toss coins at a litre of whisky, six goes a pound, nearest coin wins. Or you can throw wet sponges at one of the doctors volunteering to be a target. Better still, there’s a coffee table where you can buy a whole cake for four pounds, and right behind it you’ll find a few old ladies sitting around and pretending (poorly, at that) to be uninterested in just which of their cakes you’re eyeing. There’s a BBQ, of course, plus a little tent selling Pimm’s, and a Lucky Dip with prizes for children and the Tambola for the adults.

Anyhow, Emelyn turns 1 this week. And so it came to mind that maybe it was time for us to go back to the little party, too.

Suffice to say that Azure’s coin landed close enough to the whisky bottle that they took down her name, Jami won herself a packet of Christmas incense at the Tombola, and I bought an ‘Irish Brack loaf’ from a very pleased old lady. Then there were some steel drum players, who pretty much appeared from nowhere, and Emelyn smiled and started to clap.

My thoughts exactly, kiddo.

There’s not much story to tell, really. We carved our way through a bunch of picnic goodies, watched the world go by, and played around with the videocamera — here’s a little footage.

But since this post is overdue enough as is, let’s just out with the truth, shall we?

Last week, I went to a David Hasselhoff concert in Germany.

No, I mean, seriously, I went running to a David Hasselhoff concert. Last week. In Berlin. Germany.

And now that that’s out of the way, let me try to set it all up:

Az, Em, and I have been bouncing from place to place the last coupla weeks. The ladies went from Indianapolis straight to LA; I returned for a few crazy days back in Cambridge (typically hectic workweek, with a jet-lag twist) then jetted off to Berlin for a week for the Google European Sales Conference.

Suffice to say my corporate overlords are just as post-ironic as any hipster out there; somebody high up thought it would be funny to fly David Hasselhoff over to sing to our company party for a few hours.

I was actually a few blocks away when The Hoff started his set - I’d snuck out to sightsee and visit the Reichstag, since it was around the corner - but I went running once I realized what was going on. Alas, that means I wasn’t standing close enough to be in the video. But I was there.

Anyhow, we’re still moving around. Right now, the three of us are together in Palo Alto, as I’m spending the week at the Googleplex. The ladies joined me at work for breakfast this morning at the No-Name-Café. Emmie had some whole-wheat pancake, organic peach, and scrambled eggs, while I had a blueberry smoothie, kombucha tea, scrambled eggs, and part of Azure’s breakfast burrito. Good times.

As for me, I landed at LHR around 2pm local time, and am just now catching the 7:45 train home. Very. Long. Day.

Cutest bit was this: right after limping into work, I discovered that I was scheduled to interview a job candidate that very minute. I managed to run into the restroom to brush my teeth, at least, but I can still only imagine what the poor fellow thought of my employer after his interview. (My god, they’re all zombies! Catatonic! Crazy!)

Anyways, if the journey wasn’t so rewarding this time ‘round, the destination certainly was: our Memorial Day weekend turned out to be a great chance to meet extended family and glimpse parts of the country I’d never before visited. Indianapolis was unexpectedly verdant and green, and the local’s friendliness a contrast to the British reserve. I also managed to take in (A) a White Castle, (B) a live-bait vending machine, and (C) a sunny morning in a local laundromat that offered the best people-watching that side of the Atlantic.

Better still, we did stuff with Emelyn that we’ve never had a chance to do in the UK, like go to a big coffee shop for early-morning breakfast. (Naugahyde booths are one of the things about America that I miss most dearly; I don’t care if it’s a Denny’s or Cocos or a Bob Evan’s, a real-deal coffee-shop is one thing Euros just can’t seem to duplicate.)

Oh, and we can now tick one very minor item off the “not-a-real-American-baby-til-you-do-this” list: Emelyn finally got to try Cheerios, pawing them off the table into her mouth in her not-even-slightly-dextrous way.

Sure, I have my small grumbles about JBS and Cambridge, but one thing I can’t begrudge the University is its absolute lock on pomp and circumstance — with nearly 800 years of graduation ceremonies under its belt, Cambridge gets away with some wacky stuff in the name of tradition.

Like, the graduation ceremony is still entirely in Latin. Which is a good thing, since it precludes the usual guest-celebrity commencement speech. (Boooring.) Instead, they get right down to the business of conferring degrees. (Actually, there’s one weird bit, first, where the praelector introduces the college, bowing low and doffing his hat at unpredictable intervals. Hadn’t seen anything like that before…)

And this, then, is how the actual degree is conferred: first, the praelector stretches out his fingers, and four students each grab a digit. Then, he gives a bit of a spiel about the degree, which in our case was rather funny, inasmuch the praelector couldn’t remember how to say ‘MBA’ in Latin. After an awkward pause, he mentioned something about Maestrum Negozium et Powerpointium which sounded convincing, and then in turn, we each kneeled on a small pillow in front of Magdalene’s Master, who would clasp our raised hands while giving us his own little benediction.

By the time I was down on the pillow, I half-expected somebody would pull out a sword and tap my shoulders, too, but in truth, you just get up, make a little bow, and head on out of the Senate House. I was actually quite joyous in the moment — but that had mostly to do with the fact that I didn’t trip over my gown when kneeling or getting up. It’s a small but real risk, apparently, and they warn you about it.

Anyhow, I did fine. Can’t entirely say the same thing about Emelyn — though I will proudly say she did an admirable job of keeping quiet for the first 30 students or so. She sat stately on Azure’s lap, flipping the pages of a board books, but after 15 minutes or so, she obviously felt it was time for a little dialogue with her book, instead. Now, it’s gravely quiet in the Senate House — far quieter than we’d anticipated — so Az made the call and had our babbling baby whisked outside by Tante Hannelore, in the nick of time. So it was all good.

In short: a fine weekend. We took Mom & Dad and the Hearsts over to Ely, too, where there’s a nice cathedral and some good chippies. Looking back, we took fewer photos than we should’ve, but hey, we were having a good time.

First, Monday was a holiday in Europe, which sounds dandy, but then I was fool enough to peek at my Blackberry the night before; that unwise move kicked off a firedrill featuring poorly-translated press releases and a Spanish telecoms operator (my former employer, natch). Tuesday was no better; it was a 5:45 wake-up to get to Heathrow, to spend the day in Munich, where I visited the airport, a freeway, and an office building.

Sure, there was some travel excitement — I came within 5 minutes of missing the last plane out, and this after (and I do not exaggerate, here, swear) our Taxi-fahrer clocked 190kph/118mph getting us to the airport. Got home right before midnight, so it was cold Wheetabix for din-din.

No time for shopping, obviously, but I brought home a wonderful souvenir, regardless: my left ear has been plugged for six days now. [Aargh.]

Anyhow, that’s just the start of things. But much as I just enjoyed venting, right there, I’ve got no right to complain — Azure and Emelyn were both down with fevers over the weekend. Emelyn’s fought one virus or another since Easter, it seems, and I’m sure nothing’s easier than taking care of a sick baby than when you’re sick and alone, yourself. So a rough week all ‘round.

Better, then, to truncate this post, and point to some videos instead. Here’s our triumvirate two weeks ago, outside the Rupert Brooke pub in Grantchester. It’s Emmie’s first time on grass, not to mention her first attempts at describing her own height… ah, good times.

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!

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…

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…

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…

Nobody, of course, is better at this than the Brits. English stories always featured some dessert I’d never heard of, which sounded so good and exotic that I never quite knew if it was real, or utterly fantastical.

Narnia, for example, had Turkish Delight. Dickens rambled on about flaming Christmas Pudding in A Christmas Carol, which I adored. I know a few books that mentioned treacle, which always sounded good, though I had no idea what it was. Tolkien wrote a whole story about a baker’s quest to make the world’s finest ‘fairy-cake’. And nevermind Roald Dahl - Fox and Badger’s stores of fizzy cider, plus the scrum-dilly-umptious universe of Mr. Wonka & co.

It’s still going on. I bet half of J.K. Rowling’s global success is due to the inclusion of Bertie Botts All-flavour Beans and frothing mugs of butterbeer in every Harry Potter book. Who wouldn’t want a taste?

Now that I actually live in the UK, I obviously go bonkers when I come across one of these fine-sounding treats. I have to have it. Like on Sunday - Azure, Emmie, and I went out for tea to Auntie’s. Azure ordered Lady Grey and apple pie, but I had “Hot Ginger Bread drizzled with warm maple syrup, topped with whipped cream”. Never heard of such a thing, but boy, it seemed straight out of the storybooks.

It was awesome.

Emelyn also dined out at Auntie’s, having some carrot-zucchini-butternut-squash puree. I’m tickled to report that she was perfectly behaved. One old Englishman went so far as to wander over to our table, pause, and say, “Well she certainly doesn’t shout much”, with a nod of approval.

See for yourself:

Hi!

Case in point: Yesterday, I saw a man in a coonskin cap. I wanted to laugh, but this guy wound up being the scariest-looking dude I’ve ever seen on the streets of Cambridge.

He was tough enough without the hat. For starters, he was real weathered-looking. Like a big mean sailor. Something about him conveyed (and quickly) that this gentleman had already ‘been there, done that’ when it came to speedy resolution of conlicts. Pub fight, street fight, prison fight - check. Fists, beer bottles, butterfly knives - our man was clearly familiar with all the above.

And, as I have mentioned before, he was lumbering around Cambridge, England wearing a coonskin cap. Now, that’s a disconcerting choice of headgear on anyone, but here the effect was downright chilling.

I mean, where does one even procure such a thing? What haberdashery still stocks this item? The souvenier shop in Frontierland, for one, but that’s back in Anaheim, and I’m convinced this man had not been. He wasn’t the Magic Kingdom type, in so many words. Plus, his wasn’t a costume-shop racoon hat, it was gen-u-ine mammal. I think.

This was not a fashion statement. Nor an anachronistic affectation. This coonskip cap was, quite simply, one of Nature’s Little Warning Signs; a distinct cue for other members of the species (human and raccoon, in this case) to keep walking ahead, eyes fixed forward, never looking back.

Or laughing, either.

And that’s it. TGIF: the weekend starts in 10 hours. More news then.

There’s not much else going on. Emelyn occupies herself just being cute, and trying to eat her hands. (She hasn’t quite mastered thumb-sucking, yet.) In Cambridge, it’s getting colder at night, though it’s an stunning shiny morning from the train today - just flew past some horses grazing in a field, wearing those quilted blanket-things on their backs. Which reminds me that I better buy a suitable-for-the-office jacket, meself.

So it’s Monday morning, again. Our colds are finally leaving us, though at different speeds. Emelyn is 99.9% fine now (just snoring louder than usual, is all), I’m right behind her, and Azure and Arps are both well enough to be coming into London later today.

In fact, we were all in fine shape this entire weekend — we looped to Grantchester and back from our house on Saturday; it’s a long walk. During the week, I’ve increasingly come to view my commute as a waste of time, but come the week-end, the notion of bunkering down with baby in a crowded metropolis seems equally absurd. Our weather in the Orchard was absolutely fantastic, the air clean and crisp, and I’ve never seen the place so crowded. The four of us spent a long time in the deck chairs there, and it was getting dark by the time we neared home.

(Incidentally, Emelyn is finally starting to enjoy her pram, which is making all this movement possible. I have no idea what she thinks about in there, but a good portion of the time she’s staring at us and smiling, which is hard to argue with.)

Our Sunday started with brunch at the bistro around the corner, a stroll in the city centre (including a diaper change at Magdalene, under the arches of the Pepys library, no less), and ended with pints in the garden behind the Cambridge Blue. I don’t know how much longer the weather will let us do these kinds of things, but for now, it’s fantastic.

The plan today is for Azure and Arps (and Emmie, too) to come into London, so they can visit with a friend of Arpi’s studying here. Hopefully we’ll find a baby-friendly spot to all have dinner, and then ride the train home together. (A first.) London with a baby is a logistical challenge, one that Azure and I were debating pretty late last night. After several brave attempts, our friends Matt and Sabine told us that prams and the Tube simply don’t mix (which I can well believe), but the idea of Baby-Bjorn-ing Emelyn for an entire day doesn’t seem so ideal, either. It’ll work itself out.

Should be a busy week, in all. Looking forwards, Az, Arpi, and Emmie are seeing Pride and Prejudice on Wednesday AM. Our local ‘arts cinema’ has this weekly “Big Scream” showing (brought to you by Huggies) specially for the baby-toting demographic; I’ve never been but Az went two weeks ago and told me all about it: First off, they have a special pram-storage area setup in the lobby, like valet parking. Then there’s a Huggies changing table set up in the back of the cinema, and the room lighting is kept on, but really low. The babies, they can scream all they want. And they do.

It was a nice ceremony, and a great chance to catch up with some fellow classmates still living around Cambridge. Emelyn’s behaviour in the old cathedral was, of course, very good — she was wide awake the entire time and made hardly a peep; she was utterly fascinated by the cathedral’s windows.

This being a British christening, the next stop was (of course) the village pub. Emelyn enjoyed the reception plenty, too — lots of other babies to meet. As luck would have it, however, we forgot to bring a change of clothes. Now, while eschewing the actual details, suffice to say that Murphy’s Law was in effect, and this all became an issue during her diaper change. No worries, though — Emelyn remained quite pleased with herself the entire time, and everything turned out just fine in the end. Alas, her wardrobe is shy one onesie now, which we delicately left behind in a bin back in Saffron Walden…

She also had her big six-week checkup with a doctor, which went swimmingly. Emelyn’s weight is right on the 50th percentile; it even looks like she might be a tall girl. She is, for now, at least — her current length is between the 70th and 91st percentile.

We haven’t taken many pictures this week, but I’ve cobbled together a small video to share some of her smiling-ness, and to show off her little dance moves.

All else is good, here. (Well, almost: Dad heads to Google in three short days, and is not looking forward to leaving the ladies behind every morning. It’ll be a bittersweet change of pace…)

Auntie and Emelyn prove the point, here, in this small video…

It’s pretty fancy. There’s a variable-speed motor, it plays 8 different melodies, and it even features 4 disco lights (kid you not). I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Fisher-Price have somehow hidden an infant-sized TV remote and sippy-cupholder in the armrest.

See for yourself:

Emelyn had afternoon errands, too — Azure carried her back from school to the York Street Surgery (just a few blocks from our house) for her bi-weekly weigh-in. Emelyn is now 8lbs 8oz, which puts her weight right smack-dab at where it’s s’posed to be for her age. Good to know.

I can report that Emelyn and I both survived our first loud-crying-in-public event; yesterday it was finally my turn to be the sheepishly-smiling dad standing outside the restaurant with wailing baby in hand. Suffice to say I executed a hot-potato handoff the moment Azure returned from the restroom, Emelyn got her own lunch about 60 seconds later, and things quieted down quickly.

Anyhow. Emelyn is great, and Azure and I… incredibly tired. But we wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Mum’s having a bit of a lie-in, is she?” is what the Starbucks guy asked, but in fact, Azure was already up and chatting with an NHS health worker who swung by in our absence. When we came back, Azure and the NHS worker (an RN) were going through some paperwork, but we shortly got down to the fun stuff: the official weigh-in.

No doubt it’s a reflection of Emmie’s modest nature and general propriety, but she doesn’t particularly like to be disrobed for diaper changes or baths. Getting Emelyn to sit naked on a scale was therefore not much to her fancy, either. However, in due course Emelyn settled down, and clocked in at a healthy 7lbs 6 ounces, which is 3 ounces over her birth weight, and a good six ounces more than earlier last week. The nurse was happy with this, so we were, too.

We managed to hit one pub, at least. The Cambridge Blue, one of just two non-smoking pubs in all Cambridge, sits literally around the corner from our house. Alas, Azure is still stuck drinking ‘sparky water’, but dad, Aunt Sheri and Uncle Jeff managed to enjoy a few pints of Hobson’s Choice and Woodford Wherry in their baby-friendly beer garden. (Emelyn, meanwhile, stayed asleep in her sling.)

Most of the time, though, we’re at home. Because taking care of baby is, like, hard work. Az and I have plenty of things to be thankful for, and a big one at the moment is that Emelyn popped into our lives during this long ‘summer vacation’ — probably the last such break we’ll have. And I dunno how we’d manage otherwise.

Emelyn’s made a lot of progress, fast. Her mom and dad are very proud of her.

Not as firestarters, mind. I’m talkin’ cigarette lighters as rock-ballad accoutrements, i.e. glowing objects to be held aloft whenever the band plays a song you like. Because that’s what happened last night, thanks to the whole cameraphone / digital camera scene. Stuck towards the back, I could spot each and every viewfinder that popped up above the crowd — they looked like little glowing blue things, jumping and hopping to the music — until, poof, they’d go down for a few minutes and other consumer electronics would take their place.

You gotta wonder what that looks like from the rockstar’s perspective. They don’t see the screens. Instead, it’s half the crowd stomping and going wild, the other half apparently content to stand still and show you their phones….

Anyhow. Haven’t had time to read that book about the Wisdom of Crowds, but I’ve heard the gist of it, and so last night I made sure to hoist my own Sony