The Grind

I'm finally getting over my horrible cold and getting into the routine of the new year. Sometimes I go to my Grandma T's, and sometimes I go to my Nonna's, and sometimes I'm with one of my parents, but on the weekends I get to hang with both my parents.

In developmental news, I'm working on all things color-related, like practicing the names of the colors and learning to use crayons and markers. I've started to use the word "walk" and I am crazy, crazy, crazy about the word "eat" which gets an even better reaction than the sign for more or just general screaming.

Here I am playing at home last week, but the important thing about this picture is, how much do I look like my Uncle Sean???
I love, love, love to play with Legos and MegaBlocks!

My friend Marixa FINALLY got to come home a couple of weeks ago after working in Panama for eight months, and on Saturday Marixa and Jim came over for pizza. Here, I was showing Jim my groovy new monkey chair my Oma made me:

We listened to some cool music by Marixa's cousin's band, El Papo Vecino:

For Uncle Jon, another shot of me sporting the Tebow jersey he gave me:
I'll be back soon with new adventures I have planned!

Sick Day

Greetings from the house of fever and phlegm! We are all sick at my house, and let me tell you, it is not cool. I have never felt so bad, but the upside is that I am getting to cuddle non-stop. I'm also getting extra baths, but why must they be so cold??? Here I am, having a bubble bath with Daddy (and the bubbles do kind of compensate for the coldness, I must say):

Yesterday, Daddy had to go to work, and Mommy and I were both pretty weak, so Daddy took us over to Nonna's, and I cuddled all day with Mommy while Nonna took care of us. Today, Daddy is sicker, and Mommy has the day off from school, so we can all stay home together. My fever has finally broken, and although my nose is a fountain of grossness, I feel well enough to play a little. Here I am, toting around my little people in my man bag:

I still feel like being snuggly, though. Here I am, snuggling into the afghan Aunt Terry made my parents when they got married, playing owl:

And here I am reading my Wiggles coloring book. When I was in Italy, I watched the Wiggles on the satellite TV in our apartment several times and enjoyed dancing with them:



*****

The other day, Mommy and I were looking at the hits I get on this blog and found some odd search terms that brought people here. Some make sense, sort of, like "grandmas blues" which would have matched my great-grandma blues post of last May. Someone with a TV star crush searched "laura prepon like and dislikes," which is a tiny bit creepy (and ungrammatical) and hit the post where my parents went to the Late Late Show taping and Laura Prepon was a guest. The weirdest one, though, was "moview [sic] where man crawled like a dog." I get why the person hit here, what with my crawling and and my movies and my dog theme, but I'm a little disturbed about the person who typed in that search.


*****


Before I got sick, I tried on the Tebow jersey Uncle Jon sent me for Christmas. To all my Buckeye friends, I want to say: Don't be haters!

Like a Big Pizza Pie

I loved Italy so much, maybe because Italy loved ME: the bread, the biscotti, the beautiful women who stopped in the streets to rub my cheek and tell me how bello I was. I wish my parents had taken pictures of that. Anyway, here are the other highlights of my trip:

Holiday Highlights

Since Daddy went back to work and Mommy went back to school, I can't get much help updating this blog. I would do it all myself, but since I can't read (I mean, I can read, but I can't read read), it's kind of hard to know which buttons to push to make this thing go (although I have had some success with the random button pushing method on remote controls). And speaking of reading, I guess I can read read a little: I have recently spontaneously identified the letter "O" and the number "2" on public signage, much to my parents' shock, so I suppose next week I'll be reading "War and Peace".

Anyway, I got my Mommy to finish the holiday season highlight reel, so here it is; next up, my Italy video!

World Weary

Ciao, everyone. I'm home, and I'm tired. I slept over 14 hours when we got home, and I'm still a little off, but it was worth it. I had such a great time in Italy, getting to be with both of my parents 24/7, and I'll finish telling you all about it soon, but I need another nap right now.

I will close with the news that I am now referring to myself by name, i.e. "MONDO" - which is pretty appropriate for me, since I'm a mondo kind of guy, don't you think? - or sometimes "MINOT" (as in, the "Magic City" of North Dakota), depending on my self-perception on any given day. Or, if I repeat my name over and over, it morphs into "DAHDO" and then into something like the way I say Thank You. I like to go around the table and name everyone: DaDa, MaMa, and [insert self-selected name of day here]. It's pretty cool.

30 Seconds

I am utilizing the laundromat computer to let you know I am alive and well in Rome and will update you with pictures of me at the Spanish Steps, me at the Colosseum, me at the finest playgrounds in Rome, etc, as soon as I get home, Friday or Saturday. I must also report that I have learned to say Ciao, sort of (it sounds like DAO when I say it), so on that note let me say, Ciao for now!

Italy, Continued

Hello again from Spoleto! Here's my latest installment in my travelogue:

We end most nights at the Caffe Garibaldi, at the bottom of our street, where they give me perfectly warmed and frothy milk and always, always, an extra cookie. My parents drink cups of hot chocolate that remind them of Madrid, and I talk to everyone going by, which is one of the great things about Spoleto - everyone wants to talk to me and tell me how good-looking I am. I love this place. Anyway, the other night, while we waited for our treats, Mommy brought out the paper and crayons Nonna got me and I exercised my inner artiste:

Every time they bring out the plate of cookies, I gasp with pleasure. I especially like the ones dipped in chocolate!
Yesterday, we were very good tourists and saw a bunch of the sights. Here, I burned off all the energy I had built up in the stroller by running around like a madman in the piazza in front of the Duomo, a big, famous church:

I climbed ALL THESE STEPS up from the Duomo, with no assistance but holding Mommy's hand.

Here's the whole front of the Duomo, from those steps:

After the duomo, we walked on up to the Rocca, the big stone fortress that used to protect the town in, I don't know, days of yore or whatever. We walked all the way around it and found the Ponte di Torre bridge, which took our breath away.
Here's the bridge:

Daddy walked out on the bridge and found this spectacular view:

Mommy and I stayed on land and cheered Daddy on:
We went to lunch then at Osteria del Matto (Matto means MADMAN - how great is that!), and the owner was so nice to me: he showed me all of his Pinocchio puppets and gave me a ballpoint pen with which to mark up my brown paper placemat (and my hands, and my face, and my shirt), plus he had the best bread. My parents dined on pasta e fagoli soup and four kinds of bruschetta (garlic, arugula and radicchio, mushroom, and celery pesto), fried mozzarella, fried cauliflower, and potatoes cooked in olive oil and cider vinegar, but I only had eyes for the bread. For the record, I have been eating broccoli and cauliflower and cheese pizza and other things at our apartment, but when we go out, I can't keep my hands off the bread! I love that bread!

I have essentially ignored the time difference between Italy and the US. I wake up around 11:30 am or so, take a nap at about 3:00 pm, am put to bed in my pajamas at about 8:00 pm - but treat it as my afternoon nap, which means I get up about 10:00 pm and am ready to play until midnight or 1:00. The other night, when I woke up at night, I discovered my parents eating olive oil/tomato/basil potato chips, and I made clear the necessity of them sharing with me. In fact, I probably ate half the bag. Afterwards, I was a little chip-drunk. This is what a 1:00 am chip hangover looks like:

Today, shortly after we got up (very, very late), the power in our apartment went out, so we got dressed, buzzed our host extraordinaire Laurie and let him know about our problem, then headed out in search of lunch.

It was drizzling, so not to many people were out, and we strolled up and down the hilly streets until we landed at Trattoria del Festival, where I had a fantastic lunch of potatoes (cut like a potato chip but cooked like a French fry) and big brown beans in a tangy sweet glaze. My parents had soup - zuppa di farro, a lentil and bulghur soup that made my Daddy happy on a rainy day, and zuppa di whatever those brown beans were, which was sort of sweet like baked beans and from which my Mommy fished out all the beans I could eat, which was a large number. Then they ate an omelette with local black truffles and a pasta I can't name but which was 2" wide and 4" long (more or less) and flat, tossed with tomatoes and garlic and other things and a crazy amount of olive oil. Those dishes weren't my thing, but they loved them, so I guess that's what matters.

After lunch, we strolled and window-shopped a little more, and I got to watch this fountain in the Piazza di Mercato, but the rain was starting to pick up, so we headed home...

...to find that our electricity problem was solved! Ciao until next time!

The Winter 08 Travelogue, Parte Due

Ciao, my pretties! I’m taking a break from living la vita here in Spoleto to update you on the last few days.
Monday morning, still in New York, I woke up bright and early, so we walked around the corner to EuroPan, had some French toast, and watched the neighborhood wake up.

Then we went back to the hotel for a shower, which was, frankly, a disaster. I had been enjoying walking into the (dry) shower and waving to my parents in the bedroom through the big window that made up the outside wall of the shower, and I’ve taken many a shower on the road in the past. But stepping into the running shower that day just freaked me out, even after Daddy got in with me and held me. It just took all of the fun out of shower windows.


We had lunch at Vegetarian Paradise 2, where I enjoyed broccoli and rice and not much else, then we picked up our takeout order from Red Bamboo for the plane. We also went shoe shopping, which was completely boring, because there were zero kids’ shoes, plus my parents each tried on about a hundred pairs of shoes and bought none of them. The only saving grace was the store cat, who didn’t seem to mind me yelling and waving at it.

I got to ride another train, this time back to the airport, and I was feeling pretty excited when we boarded the plane. A man stopped Mommy in the aisle, laughed, and asked her if she had given me any codeine. He turned out to be sitting right in front of me, so I got him back for that little comment by rasping the soles of my pajama feet on the tray table on the back of his seat, all night long.

I didn’t sleep so well on the plane, so I was glad to get off and take a couple of trains, first from the airport to the central train station, on which I got dressed for the day, and then on the second train, to Spoleto, on which I finally slept peacefully for an hour and a half.

When I woke up, I was in a parking lot looking at a man named Laurie, who took us in his car to the apartment that is our home for a week. I have a cozy room of my own, with a play yard nearly identical to the one I have at home, and a long, wide hallway in which I can run back and forth to my heart’s content. At the end of the hallway is the living room, which has a little table the perfect height for me to play at, a TV that has a channel of nothing but Teletubbies and Pingu and assorted other shows that only a kid my age could love, and big glass doors leading to a big terrace; when it’s nice, I can run around and around the terrace, and when it’s bleak, I can still see outside.


When we arrived Tuesday, we all took long naps, but when we woke up, we took a walk all around the town, and I climbed almost the whole way from our apartment (at the lower end of the upper town) to nearly the top.


Then we ate at a restaurant across the street from us, Osteria del Trivio, where I refused to eat anything but bread but my parents ate tiny savory tartlets, big slabs of creamy cheese, olive oil-soaked pieces of toast topped with creamy, lemony spinach and vinegary tomatoes, and little cups of melted cheese drizzled with balsamic syrup, with the rind of the cheese folded over the top so that they looked like little oysters. They also ate tagliatelle with porcini and tomatoes and spinach ravioli, but I was still exclusively interested in the bread basket. Since I wasn’t crazy about the food, the host picked me up and took me back to the kitchen for a tour, and then he gave me a wooden Santa ornament, which was pretty cool.


Yesterday, we all slept in, and then we walked out into the sunshine and had lunch at a bar in the Piazza Garibaldi. My parents ate a spinach and cabbage dish with olive oil and salt, and an eggplant parmesan baked into a toast cup, but I was still only feeling the bread, plus a few peanut butter crackers my parents offered me in desperation. After lunch, we walked all over the upper (old) town, peered down at the ancient Roman Theater from Piazza Liberta, and shopped at the grocery store.

At one intersection in town, there were two elevators, by themselves, that went somewhere underground, and we were feeling adventurous, so we went down, to find ourself in a long tunnel with many escalator ramps. We went all the way to one end, where there were elevators up to the street across from a hotel. Then we went all the way down to the other end - and found a parking garage. It was sort of strange.


Back up at street level, we found a slightly muddy playground, and I got out of the stroller and went nuts. I went down all the slides, and took a ride on the swings, and see-sawed, and climbed all over and through a play train, and gave my parents heart attacks when I ran right off the edge of one of the many terraces on the playground. I was fine, if a bit muddy, but my parents were all freaked out, so they dusted me off and put me back in the stroller and started the hike back home. Mommy made a frittata with broccoli and cauliflower in it for dinner, thinking I would be happy to eat my favorite foods, but I wasn’t interested, although I did finally eat something not made of bread: almost a whole, huge apple.


This morning, my parents tried to tempt me with croissants stuffed with jam and a panini stuffed with goat cheese and arugula from the bakery at the bottom of our street, but I wasn’t fooled - I knew it wasn’t just bread, and I wouldn’t touch the stuff. We decided to have a lazy day today, since it’s kind of bleak out and we're still not quite on the local schedule, and I’ve enjoyed just running around in my pajamas and reading books and eating apples and drinking milk - lots and lots of milk. I was finally tempted this afternoon by the pizza my Mommy made, and I didn’t even pick off the cheese or the tomatoes, like I usually do. Maybe tonight, I’ll branch out even further - we’re headed out for gelato now, so it seems like as good a time as any to eat something besides bread.


Ciao for now!