Home from Italy

Dev, Beatrice, and I spent the last week in Florence and Rome, enjoying a last family vacation while we're still a family of three. We have been so busy these days with major professional projects, house-buying, and preparing for Baby #2 that it was really nice to take a week away just to be together without having any work to do. Also, on a more practical note, we were glad to slip in one more long flight before Beatrice turns two and is no longer eligible to fly for free.

Since Dev and I had both visited most of Italy's must-see sights on previous trips, we didn't feel a lot of pressure to see any particular things - we mostly just went on long walks, ate great food, and took lots of photos.


Of course, we did hit a few major tourist highlights, like the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Sistine Chapel in Rome (the last time I was in Rome the Chapel was closed for cleaning and renovation, so I had never seen it).

In Florence we stayed in a lovely furnished apartment in a seventeenth-century building overlooking the Arno and less than one block from the Ponte Vecchio (and thanks to Amy Turner for this excellent recommendation).

The Ponte Vecchio, from our apartment window

That meant we did all our sightseeing on foot - in fact, we didn't have to use a taxi, bus, or train during the three days we were there, which is much easier with a toddler. Staying in an apartment also meant we could eat out for breakfast and lunch but make dinner at home, saving money while also ensuring that Beatrice could go to bed relatively early. Usually we'd buy meats, cheeses, and breads from a local grocery store, eat them for dinner in the early evening, and then take a walk with Beatrice around the piazzas to get coffee and gelato before putting her to bed. Jetlag and weird travel schedules, however, meant that Beatrice did eat at least one dinner out at a fancy restaurant at 10pm - how European!

Beatrice picks daisies in the ruins of the Palatino

In Rome, too, we were lucky with location - in this case we stayed in a hotel within walking distance of Trevi Fountain, the Forum, the Colosseum, and virtually every other major sight, though we did have to hop in a taxi for our trip to the Vatican.

This was Beatrice's first international trip and overall she handled it remarkably well. The twelve-hour flights each way were challenging, to say the least, but at least Beatrice enjoyed traveling by train. On the train from Florence to Rome, Beatrice absolutely fell in love with a Russian preteen girl who was traveling home with her family from Venice's Carnivale - she sat on the girl's lap almost the entire 1.5-hour train ride, totally in awe of her impressive "big girl" ways and her bright pink sweater. Beatrice also took to hugging random toddlers she'd meet on her travels - I think after a week with only Dev and me she was starved for toddler companionship.

Beatrice feeds pigeons at the Vatican with an Italian little boy and his grandparents

Beatrice's favorite parts of Italy were pasta e fagioli, hot steamed milk (like a latte without the espresso: she calls them "hot cup"), peccorino cheese, dogs, and paintings of babies (mostly the baby Jesus). She went through the entire Uffizi going from one baby painting to another, shushing us all because there was a "baby" there. Other highlights included chasing pigeons at the Vatican, splashing in Trevi Fountain, and playing with rocks at the Colosseum. I'm sure Beatrice also enjoyed the near-constant desserts we bribed her with to keep her happy on long walks, on the train, and in museums. During the week she learned the words "cracker," "frog," and "Pope."

Beatrice and Dev share some pasta

Beatrice plays with pebbles at the Colosseum

The Italians loved children just as much as we'd heard they would, especially the men. Luckily Beatrice is very outgoing and loves attention - a shyer child might have been a bit nervous about all the strangers kissing her, hugging her, and picking her up, but Beatrice seemed genuinely delighted by it. Plus some of the people gave her candy.

Eating pizza in the hotel room in Rome

Drinking some "hot cup"

Also, and I know I'm bragging here, but I have to say - we spent a week in Italy with a toddler and all we packed in total was one carry-on bag, one checked bag, and one umbrella stroller for the three of us. Yep, pretty proud of that.

A lack of ramps or elevators meant that Dev carried Beatrice in her stroller up and down hundreds of stairs all over Italy.

This was our first trip out of the country in almost three years and our biggest trip since having a baby - it definitely feels great to be back in the swing of things again. We also learned a lot about what does and doesn't work when traveling internationally with toddlers.

Sleeping in the Rome train station

Beatrice, passed out asleep in a toy store

All in all, it was a great way to celebrate our last week as a family of three. Now we're back home and immersed in getting ready to move. In other news, I'm heading into week 30 of the pregnancy - Beatrice, you may remember, was born in week 38, so we're getting close . . .

Beatrice eating gelato

Check out more of our photo on Facebook or Flickr.

We're Moving!

We bought a house!

After a long and oftentimes dispiriting search, we finally found a house we love. We'll be moving to Burbank, about four and a half miles west of our current home and still only five miles from Dev's office in Glendale.

The house has many items on my wish list, including office space, a guest bedroom, a grassy backyard, and good schools; and one big item on Dev's: a giant, two-story professional-style garage (the type a car mechanic might have). In fact, the garage has the same square footage as the house.

Also, as a small but charming bonus, the backyard comes complete with a little children's playhouse.

The house is in very sound condition but of course it will require a lot of cosmetic changes and a few larger structural ones, so expect lots of before and after pictures on this blog in the coming months. We are really looking forward to taking on some new projects and learning new skills as we go. (Dev is mostly hoping he can find a reason to rent a backhoe.)

We expect to close on March 21 and to move in the following weekend.

In the meantime, I'm cleaning, packing, and getting ready to move - and I am also delighting in getting rid of things and decluttering our space. I've donated at least 20 garbage bags full of stuff in the last month or two with more to follow. So if you want any old maternity clothing, obsolete computer parts, or mismatched cooking gear, just come hang around my house this month.

That's the playhouse on the left, garage on the right. (And yes, that fountain in the middle of the yard is the first thing to go.)

Toddlers are weird.

This morning Beatrice insisted that she wanted to wear her pink and red snow hat to breakfast.

She wore it while eating quiche and a bagel.



She offered bits of her bagel to the photographs of the babies on the refrigerator as she always does.

Then she offered some to the dogs. Then she insisted on jamming pieces of bagel into my mouth.


Then she found a pair of pajama pants in the clean laundry pile and offered them to the photo-babies.

Then she used those pants to wipe down her chair and table, the dog kennels, the floors, the windows, and the back door.

She also kept sitting in my lap, hugging and kissing me, and singing "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" (she doesn't really know the words, or the tune, but she sings tuneless gibberish while making all the right hand gestures - I still need to get it on video.)

I quizzed her on some body parts.

She spent more than an hour dashing around the kitchen cleaning, singing, eating, and feeding the dogs and babies, then suddenly announced she was ready to "go [to the] car." So she went and got her shoes and my shoes and handed them to me for "help shoes" and we went to IKEA to meet Lucas and Veronika.

Why look, it's Beatrice!

I woke up this morning to find Beatrice (and Naresh!) in my daily Apartment Therapy newsfeed in a story about "fabulous photobooths."

I'm already planning her second birthday party now (which we'll be having early, in Apri or May, to accomodate Baby #2's due date) - I hope you make it!

Jack and Beatrice

I had to draw your attention to this post at Summer St. Pierre's blog, it's too cute.

Beatrice loves going to Jack's house so much she now recognizes it even from the street outside and will start saying "Jack! Jack!" (or sometimes more like "Gack! Gack!") as soon as we pull up.

Of course, as much as she loves Jack, I think she's mostly excited to see Summer, whom she absolutely adores...

Happy Valentine's, part two

Today we continued to celebrate Valentine's Day with a little cookie decorating party for the kids at Summer's house.

Summer provided Jack, Miller, and Beatrice with some heart-shaped sugar cookies, frosting, and sprinkles for decorating.

Somehow Beatrice was the only one who wound up with frosting in her hair.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is not one of my favorite holidays (those are Halloween and Christmas) but I still like any excuse for a celebration.

At the beginning of this month I hosted a Valentine-making party where my friends and I made cards for friends and family.

I made one ribbon-stitched card, one embroidered doily card, and one quilled card before settling on the final design of a bird with a banner, toile, and textured ribbon - the prettiest design as well as the easiest to make in large quantities.




Then I made about a dozen more bird cards and mailed them away.

I also made some Valentine's brownie cupcakes for the party.


I used Pediapress to make Dev a custom encyclopedia on the topic of Extreme Geography: The World's Most Isolated Places, featuring remote destinations like the Pitcairn Islands as well as a List of Places with Fewer than 10 Residents.

I also made him homemade ice cream sandwiches with peppermint ice cream. (Dev had been wanting peppermint ice cream since Christmas but we couldn't seem to find it anywhere - all we could find was mint chip ice cream dyed pink and dubbed "peppermint" for the holidays, but what he really wanted was vanilla ice cream with chunks of peppermint candy in it. I used this recipe for the ice cream and this for the cookies.)