PLASMONN

In a week of first, another small step for men and a giant step for Amy
This morning i was having tea with biscuits, and Amy was looking at me longing
so i thought mmm she is 6 months old, she has been very good with her food, she does try and eat anything that comes into her hands, my parents brought plasmonn biscuits from Italy
so
1+1+1 = 2

i gave Amy a biscuit  (you can see she was not so convinced at the beginning...)

Her first biscuits and she did eat it, all on her own, with minimum spillage...

 "What is is that you said i should be doing with this????"

Yum Yum Yum

so bring on the season of new wall decorations, made with food

Go Amy and welcome to the solid food world

an amazing new adventure begins...

My First Photographs

This morning we woke up very early,
we still could not go to Amy's layer in the sitting room and Amy was being a bit bored so i decided to turn on the phone, put it on front camera and proceeded to give Amy the phone ....
These were the results
:)

 "Amy here is the phone, you need to tap on the screen "... click

 " me likes this"

and she kept on banging on the phone, so more pictures were taken...

So indeed Babies can operate mobile phones, they indeed seem to be intuitive
so no more excuses for my parents, that cannot take pictures on the mobile.....
and no more excuses for my husband that does not take pictures....

Amy's first read

... here are some shots from our Italian trip...

     on this day Amy reads for the first time....

( ... she choose a discount leaflet form a well know Italian supermarket ...)

"well mummy let's see what can i do today.."

" mmmmm maybe o could read, Grandfather move me in position please..."

  " this seems interesting, let's see if i can turn the page.."

 ...swwish ... swish...

" this is interesting... maybe it also tastes good .. nomnom..."

" No??? Me can no eat this??? "

" Seriously??? "

 

"THEN FEED MEEEE"

An Halloween post

... In Italy we do not have Halloween, on those days in October/November we remember our departed relatives and friends with endless visits to cemeteries and flowers
(chrysanthemums to be precise... a flower you learn from a very young age to identify with death and gives way fro plenty misunderstanding when you go abroad)
I only remember the utter boredom of it all plus the "caldarroste" i was allowed to have as a treat if i behaved.
So i was excited for Amy to have her first trick or treat night in London ... last year we finished 4kg of candy in 30 minutes... so many neighbour's children and parents showed up, it is a great way to get to know people that live close by and have children..
I even bought her an outfit....
But then life is strange and we found ourselves in Italy for Halloween...
was I supposed to give up and not have a celebration?????
Of course not!!!!
we did try and ruin 2 pumpkins by carving them (too ashamed to post pictures)
and in the end we did settle for costume and (me) eating a lot of candy
here are the results:

                  mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

                                                                             Trick or Treat???

                                                                                       Trick

Maybe i have changed my mind and choose

TREAT

you gotta roll with it

We were on holiday at my parents' house and we did make a makeshift play mat for Amy ,
on this particular day she was happily playing
...

but she started to think maybe it was time for something different... mumble mumble

 She asked the fish what she should do:



 She then looked at Mummy for some direction:


And Mummy said Roll Amy roll



I can do it... going, going,



                                                               

  !!!!GONE!!!!

So here it is, proof that Amy can roll from front to back.... bring on more rolling!!!!!!

The Passport AKA "il lasciapassare A38"

When i was a child getting a passport was like a dream,a momentous event that will enable me to leave the horrible little town i was born into and open the doors to amazing locations and exotic destinations (to be fair up to 15 the most exotic place i visited was Switzerland !?! )
The path that led me to my first passport was long at first i did not have a passport, i was "part" of my parents passport, when i got to 11 i got a strange green wallet, at 13 I graduated to an ID card and finally with the move to the UK i got my Passport.

So when the time came for Amy to get her passport (after all she has got dual nationality) i was duly excited; she will have not 1 passport but 2!!!!
yuppieee
Just after we registered Amy at Lambeth council we started thinking about passports and we started gathering information on how to get them...
In a matter of hours we realised that getting a British passport was pretty straight forward:
-get birth certificate
-get wedding certificate (translated by any registered translation agency in the UK)
-get form from the post office
-pay fee
-get passport
all pretty straight forward....
we then called the Italian Consulate to get instructions on how to obtain the Italian passport; it became immediately clear that it would not be so simple ... after 5 minutes on the phone with the very helpful assistant i was reminded of Asterix and his 12 tasks:

A few weeks down the line we are still lost in the burocratic iter that will one day lead to the "lasciapassare A38" but just a few days ago we got a letter in the post

Amy was all excited:

and indeed in a matter of 5 days we got Amy's british passport:

So we are all ready to go... Italy here we come, tomorrow it is going to be Amy's first flight

Amy wants to be a Trekkie

.. A musky Saturday morning, a strange music flows through the sitting room....
Science officer Amelia Chiesa is getting ready for her first adventure and she is ready to boldly go where she has never been...

 

 Here she is trying her first proper commute

.... we would have had a lot of picture if my husband had actually worked out the beam me up app, but he could not work it out .... I did however find a way to put him on the cover of SF magazine:

on the way back plenty of photo opportunities courtesy of the Emirates cable car:

The joys of breastfeeding

Disclaimer                            

nipple and breast images will flash in your mind

and not of the good kind            

 

... It was day 2, i had just woken up...
well woken up is not the correct word, regain consciousness is possibly more appropriate; just by looking around i could sense i was not in my bedroom and the bed had an awkward feeling to it... where the pupu was I??? Ahhh yes, we had a baby, a quick survey of the space around me revealed a crumpled up Richard on an impossibly uncomfortable chair and a strange creature in a transparent plastic box ... our baby ... she seemed as freaked out and lost as i was, but clearly she was looking at me
(clearly??? will discover a few days after that poor Amy at that point could not see past 10 cm)
It would soon be time to feed her;
I was prepared, I had studied, I had attended the (useless) workshop ..
It was time for breast feeding.
I was ready, I was kind of curious and a bit excited.
It could not be difficult, it would be perfectly natural (or so i had been told)
After all it was something women had done for millenia, it was the best for babies.
For if not for breastfeeding why on hearth would have nature had given us breast?What could they be for  if not to provide our offspring with all the nutrients and protection they would ever need in the first few months of their lives?
...
So i call Richard ( in those days he actually was able to wake up in a millisecond, he was so tense and scared and excited) and he picks up this tiny little things, i get ready (wiggle my bum and expose a breast), Amy looks at me with what i can only describe as hunger, hope and anticipation ...
I cradle her in my arms, prop her, as instructed in the workshop, into the "Rugby ball" position, nipple to nose, she opens wide, i see an opportunity and POP nipple in mouth ...
it's on, (i think) there we go - our fist proper feed -
...
WTF
...
WTF IS THIS HORRIBLE SEARING PAIN?????
...
amy starts crying like a fox in heat
...
WTF
...
So went our first attempt at breastfeeding, during that second day we tried several times with the results of cracked and bleeding nipples ...
feeding Amy?                                                     

We had to thank our friend Aptamil, and their starter pack. But I was not one to give up so easily. We would not give formula to our baby, I was adamant, so adamant i did not even buy any bottle (biberon). We enlisted the help of every midwife on the ward. We saw a few... the young English one, "no it's ok, just keep trying sooner or later she will feed and a little blood will not hurt her"; the Ghanaian one "get on with it woman, stop winging"; the Italian one "shit, it's a miracle you are still even

trying considering how cracked are your nipples" and my "favourite" the tractor wielding, potato like, direct and straight Teutonic one... she took one of my breast in one hand, Amy's head in the other and she proceeded to manoeuvre one towards the other in the same way you would try to engage the reverse gear in a Golf Mk2 circa 1988 ... 

It all ended in tears;
and after a couple of weeks of a crying Amy, bleeding nipples, tears and frustration on my side, feeling a failure as a woman and as a mother
(oh yes it does start early as a dear friend of mine told me)
a quick trip on amazon website brought us home several bottles and a pack of Aptamil,
The months flew by and several types of formula got tried and discarded; aptamil gave way to Cow and Gate who gave way to HIPP (the one we are currently using);
We also had several incarantion of the bottle (or Biberon in italian) first the Avent series (Amy would only eat 20 ml form the small bottle)

 And then when she had horrible colics and farting issues
(more to come on that later for your viewing pleasures)
we found MAM and she loved them, colourful, cute and most important she loved the tit on them

So almost 4 months to the date form that fateful second day we are now on 160ml at every feed 5 times a day (she is a bidoncino, what can we do?) and look what happened yesterday:

" Mummy i think i can do it on my own, just leave me to it ...."
"OOppss it's in my eye..... (coy face) help me mummy"

Amy's first manipedi

....
like all good behaved ladies Amy needs to learn the importance of taking good care of her hands and feet
so it is just natural that the time has come for her first manicure and pedicure...

Amy:
"come dici mamma???? WTF are you saying MUM????
Manicure???
Pedicure????
But i am not even sure i have hands and feet at the moment!!!"
Me:
" Really??? We shall remedy then"
... a quick search on the internet and a remedy was found:

The real manipedi for babies...
2 socks and 2 bracelets with added "noise making" insects
They are supposed to make it interesting for babies to look at their bits, so that they will understand quicker that they can move them as they please...
...on the flip side Amy might think her hands and feet are insects...
but we shall deal with this later, let's see if they work...
Amy gets kitted in the new "toys" and her look screams (again) child abuse, but she soon gets the hang of things and she does not seem to mind (or notice mind you) the insects on her feet:

We also tried to use them on the floor, in the hope she would notice the insects more, here are the results:

Yes we did have a lot of fun, but are we really any close to know that we can move the insects as we want???
Not really sure, it does not seem to have made any major difference to the way Amy looks at her extremities, but i love those little silly coloured things.
So the score on Amy's first manipedi is :
fun 10
Learning ?

  Disclaimer                                       

I never had any intention of giving Amy a manipedi with nail polish etc

i was just being silly