Almost three weeks

Finnian has been in his own bed for almost 3 weeks and it's really been great!

Nap-times have never been as issue. Although he does run away from me when I try to give him his soother downstairs, because he knows that means we're going upstairs to bed. But as soon as I actually get the soother in his mouth, he climbs into my arms and we go upstairs. He usually rolls around A LOT, and sometimes sits up for a bit, but he has never gotten out of bed, and he just lays back down again and eventually falls asleep.

Bed-times have been relatively the same. He runs away when I try to give him his soother, but then he gives Conor a kiss goodnight and we go up and read a few stories. Lately once the stories are done he cries a little bit, but by the time I turn off the light he is fine. He doesn't roll around or sit up or anything, he just lays there, who knows how long it takes for him to actually fall asleep.

But obviously night time is a lot longer than naptime. Probably half of the nights Conor and/or I have to get up once for him... just to give him a soother or something. One night Conor thought that it was morning and Finn had been fussing for a bit so he brought him into bed, I wasn't happy because I didn't want to start that, but I fell asleep again and when I woke up he was back in his bed, Conor moved him back when he realized it was only 3am. One other time I brought him into bed because he was fussing a lot, and even after climbing into bed with him until he fell asleep, he woke again and I was tired of it. Otherwise he sleeps straight through, wakes up, runs over to my lamp, turns it on, gives me his cheesy grins, comes into bed for cuddles (I turn off the lamp again) and then the day begins.

So yes, the days are getting tough keeping this toddler occupied, but having good nights with him in his own bed to help (a little)

Time for an update

Well I guess it's time for some sort of post. Today has been rather blah though, so don't expect a very upbeat one.

The morning started off pretty good... although Finn has just been extra needy lately, and nothings ever quite right and he gets upset very quickly if things aren't just so. But he's usually really good once I get him outside. We went and got groceries and then went out for coffee with a friend, he was still doing good. We got home, put away the groceries, had lunch, and then it was naptime. All went smoothly. Then he woke up from naptime, about a half hour early, and wasn't very happy. I got him to just lay in bed for a bit with me, which was nice, and then we had our usual snack, and then it all went south from there.

Probably primarily because I decided it was time he get a haircut. A few weeks ago I got SO sick of the mullet that during bathtime I grabbed the scissors and did a straight cut along the back - which meant that right in the middle of the back hair it was the shortness I desired, but then since it was straight across, it was longer on the sides (under the ears) if that makes sense. Anyways, it looked funny, but I was happy for the time being.

Then lately the hair must have been getting in his eyes because he would furrow his brow and move his eyes back and forth like he's trying to figure out what it is. AND I could hardly see his ears.

Anyways, it was time time time for a haircut. After we had some juice I grabbed some raisons for him, took off his shirt (should have take off his pants too!), set up my laptop with baby einstein and began the torturous event of cutting a toddlers hair. He cried and cried and cried the WHOLE time, and kept rubbing his face so his face was covered in a mixture of hair, snot and tears. Let's just say the haircut left a lot to be desired, and I have future plans (next bathtime) to have Conor holding him still while I correct the front and one side (think mushroom), but the back looks splendid. I left the sun bleached blond for Conor and got rid of the mullet for me, and I can see his ears again!

I then ran a bath for him and got that ready while he finished his show. Once he was done I decided to strip him down right there instead of the bathroom so as not to trail the hair. I got him out of his chair and as soon as he saw all the hair on his pants and just started bawling and pointing at it like it was some monster coming to get him! I took of his pants and then he saw the hair on the ground and on his chair and started bawling again.

Bathtime was a mixture of ups and downs, and he was only happy when I told him he could watch another show on the couch while I cleaned up. The silence was golden!

By then it was 5pm, and I knew as soon as the show was over the crying would start again, so I got the stroller all packed and as soon as it ended I popped him in and we went down to the beach and kicked a ball around the boardwalk until Conor met up with us... headed home, had some left over chicken parmasana from yesterday (yum yum yum!), somehow survived another hour with Finn and then finally got him off to bed!

And now it's my bedtime so that I can survive another day like today (I know it sounds pessimistic, but this way if it's a really good day than I will be pleasantly surprised!).

Hopefully I'll have a better update for you tomorrow.

Our neck of the woods

Ya, not much happening here. This week was spent doing the same old, same old.

Conor went into Rome a few times. We eat breakfast together and then Conor goes to school, or to the local library to do some work. I do some cleaning and/or laundry. Then Finn and I head to the grocery store and hopefully bump into one of the moms (or rather the one mom that we ever really see) and maybe go for coffee. Finn and I come home for lunch. Finn has a nap, and sometimes I do too, sometimes not. Otherwise I just relax while he sleeps. After he wakes up we have a snack and then head to the park or somewhere else for a bit of walk and playtime. Then home again home again, Conor gets home. We have dinner. I give Finn a bath. Finn goes to bed. Conor and I watch some shows or play a game or something. We go to bed. We wake up. And it all begins again!

This morning though, we invited the Andersons (aussies with the 5 kids) for pancake breakfast. Finn LOVES playing with their kids, and I love it! We had a yummy breakfast and visit and they left just before lunch. Now Finn is napping.

Boring post, I know, but that's what happens when not much is happening :) (not that I'm complaining - I like it this way)

Favorite videos

I was just looking at my youtube account to see how many people had viewed my most recent videos, and there's a couple favorites. Most got less than 10 views, but a couple got around 30! (although one was helped by the fact that I posted it directly on the blog, and on facebook).

I then started looking back at the 108 videos I've posted to see how many viewers watched those ones, some got watched ALOT... so I thought I'd feature them here and get more views out of it! I was thinking of posting only ones with 30+ views, but I snuck a few others in, and didn't post some just because they weren't actually that exciting but somehow managed a

lot of views

I'm posting these from oldest to youngest.

1. With 21 views - Finn Laughs!

2. With 45 views: Bathtime

3. With 47 views: Spray Bottle - my person fave!

4. With 52 views: Clapping

5. With 60 views: ATTACK

6. With 34 views: So proud

7. With 181 views: Hi Grandparents - okay, seriously 181 views???

8. With 33 views: Reading

9. With 31 views: Conor reading to Finn

10. With 21 views: Conducting - the beginning of the trend

11. With 31 views: Walker

12. With 35 views: Playing with the laundry

13. With 30 views: Dancing to the Sweeney Singers

14. With 44 views: First steps! - even though he didn't walk about for about 2 months after this!

15. With 31 views: Fun with keys

16. With 36 views: Power Burst #2 - he hadn't done this in Months and had a genuine power burst a couple days ago, it was great

17. With 87 views: Stand up and then some

18. With 37 views: May 6, 2010 #2

19. With 0 views: June 6, 2010 - yes, that's right, zero views. But I'm assuming it's because I uploaded it while we were in Canada, and our parents wouldn't have been looking then. But this is one of my faves.

20. With 55 views: Real Singing!!!

21. With 36 views: Talking

I won't post the Grand Conductor one again, but it has 27 views so far.

My little conductor

Finn has been conducting for about a year now, and it's an ever changing thing. Sometimes he conducts really small with just his index fingers, and sometimes, like in this video, he conducts LARGE, but with big arm gestures.

22 months!

Okay, I know his 22 month mark was on the 6th, but better late than never.

Other than the terrible two's starting to rear it's ugly head in the form of TANTRUMS, Finnian is so fun! He loves nothing more than to lie on the couch with us while driving his cars on our legs or arms, dance, eat!, watch the ducks and geese at the park, read books, have a bath, etc.

There are new videos on my youtube HERE

And new October pictures HERE

St Mary of the Cross

This is a big year for Australian's, as the first ever Australian saint was canonized on Sunday.

We know about 11+ Australian's that are living in Rome, and a lot made the trek out from Australia for this momentous occasion. Our friends with the 5 kids said that they would pick up tickets for us, if we wanted to attend the canonization mass at St. Peter's, but we said no thanks. We just didn't think Finn would do that well for that long (about 2.5 hours), not to mention the whole thing would likely be in another language... but then on Sunday morning Conor went online and saw that there was a Canadian being canonized as well - St Andre Bessette. Darn!

Anyways, there was a mass of Thanksgiving for the Canonization of St. Mary of the Cross yesterday at St Paul's outside the walls, and since we had never been before, and I really wanted to see one particular Aussie that had made the trek out here, we went with the family. It worked out really well though, because the two girls (the "smothers" as their mother affectionally calls them) did a great job of distracting Finn almost the entire mass. And other than one incident of falling of his chair, he pretty much lasted the whole (longer than normal) mass.

And we saw more than just one person we knew. The main person I wanted to see, who I knew would be there, was my manager at the Catholic Bookshop in Melbourne. Her husband and herself had come with a small group, and it was great to see her! We were there a bit early, so Conor took Finn to the park and I went inside to scout for people and found her right away! We caught up a bit again afterwards, but otherwise that was hello and goodbye until we are back in Melbourne.

Here were the other's being Canonized on Sunday

We also saw a lady who had taken us into her home when we had one night between our temporary lodgings when we first got to Melbourne and the day we moved into our apartment - so it was great to see her again. And I also spotted one of the girls that was in our World Youth Day group, so we had a short chat before I had to go find Finn!

All of the Australian Bishops that we knew were there, and the Cardinal (to whom we owe all of our thanks for even being at the mass, let alone in Rome at all, because we are receiving our funding from him). We didn't get a formal introduction to the Cardinal, but did wave at him from his car!

I had been joking to Conor, when we saw a McDonald's on our way to the mass, that I wanted McDonald's - and he strictly forbade me from suggesting it when the time for lunch would come after mass. But I didn't have to! Because the family had also seen it on their way in, and we were all starving and it was the closest, quickest thing - so away we went.

After that we hopped back on the metro, and then onto our train and headed back to Santa Marinella. At about 330, we could start to see the affects of Finn missing his nap! When we got back the family invited us over for dinner at 630, so we decided to let Finn have a short nap before we went over there, so that he could survive dinner.

Let me tell you, this kid does NOT like his routine being so jumbled. He fell right asleep but woke up an hour later crying and crying and crying (I had deja vu of our flight!) but we eventually calmed him down with milk, raisins and baby einstein. Then when we got there for dinner the kids were there usual entertaining self and he did pretty good the whole night.

Again, didn't take pics because I forgot camera - I WILL remedy this memory problem and remember it more often, but I'll get pics from Mark later.

Busy House

Well our second guest of the year has come and gone, and we've only been here for 2.5 weeks!

I love our apartment and that we can have people stay with us. Guest number 3, Conor's cousin Liz, will be here in November, probably near the end - so until then we get back to our routine.

Conor has started his class, Thursday mornings, and otherwise it's just getting his proposal for his doctoral dissertation finalized so he can start writing!

Spell it

Here's a list of some words that we prefer to spell instead of say - unless we are prepared to let Finn have or do what we are talking about:

• B-A-T-H: This kid loves baths. Back home when we actually had a bath I would put him in while the water was running, he loved playing with it as it came out of the tap. Well we don't have that luxury here, so
• S-H-O-W: Finnian loves Baby Einstein - so much so that we are in the process of getting him used to us opening up our laptops and NOT watching a show! He also got in the habit at home of sitting on peoples laps at the desktop and watching tractor videos, also on peoples iPhones and iPads, which meant that if you were using any of those three things he was poking and prodding you until you would put a show on for him.
• Y-O-G-U-R-T: He is a yogurt FIEND! Luckily he can't figure out how to open the fridge, but when the fridge is open, he goes straight for the yogurt.

Some other things that get Finn frustrated these days:

• wanting to put jam on his toast by himself... but it takes FOREVER, so we're nipping that one right away.
• His has this cow phone but is unlike his other noisy toys in that if he presses one button, even if he presses another button the first one has to finish it's tune. He forgets about this sometimes, and really dislikes the cow "moo-ing", that when he presses it accidently and then can't stop the mooing he gets angry
• when his train comes apart - constant nuisance because then we have to put it back together often
• seeing raisins or cookies on the shelf and not getting any
• when I don't read him books first thing in the morning

The list goes on - but that will suffice for now!

To leave on a better note - watch for Finn's sign of the cross after we finish praying - so cute!

We're on a roll

Finnian's second night in his own bed was another huge success! He did wake up at one point, but feel back to sleep completely on his own.

I'm mostly surprised at how well he is falling asleep. When he was in our bed we had to be laying beside him and he would fall asleep. If we tried to leave when he wasn't asleep he would immediately start crying. The first time Finn napped in his own bed, I laid down beside him until he was asleep. The next time I just sat on the floor with my head on his bed. The third time I just sat on the floor beside him, and he took awhile to fall asleep, but he wasn't facing me so every minute or so I would inch my way closer to the door and he didn't even notice that I had left before he was asleep.

For his first night in bed though, I didn't want to leave too quickly, because I know that bedtime is different than nap time. So I sat in a chair beside his bed, and like the last nap, he was facing the other way and wasn't asleep but was taking awhile, so I got off the chair and sat on the floor closer to the door, and he didn't notice, and then I just left.

Last night, I kissed him goodnight, and told him I was going to turn off the light and lie in my own bed, which I did... and I left the room eventually before he was asleep. And he was even facing me this time.

I can't believe how ready he is! Tonight I'm going to try turning of the lamp and then just leaving and see how it goes.

This just goes to show that, with this kid, when he's ready he's totally ready. Now I just need to remind myself that when it comes potty training time - don't push before he is ready!

On sleep

For the last couple month Finn has been sleeping great – but our little secret is that he’s been sleeping in our bed and ONLY in our bed.

I was getting tired of having to pat his bum until he fell asleep in his crib – it started off well, only taking a minute or two, but it was starting to take longer and longer and my arm would fall asleep and, well you get the picture – so I decided things had to change. I decided to do a cry-it-out of sorts, but thought that maybe he would handle it better if I was in the same room as him while he went to bed… our bed in Canada was already right beside the crib, so I decided to just lie down there well he fell asleep.

It did NOT work. He screamed and cried and screamed and threw himself around his crib, as well as throwing everything out of his crib, for over 45 minutes – I finally just couldn’t take it anymore. I then went over to him and tried to pat his bum, but he was still freaking out and would not lie down. So eventually I picked him up and brought him into our bed – he calmed down right away and fell asleep. The thing is, that pretty much every night he was already ending up in our bed at some point anyways. Conor and I just don’t do battles in the middle of the night – so when he would wake up, we would try just patting him back to sleep, but if it didn’t happen right away, we would bring him into our bed and he would always go right to sleep and sleep the rest of the night.

After that CIO disaster I couldn’t even get him NEAR his crib. As soon as I would bring him into the bedroom at night he would start frantically pointing to our bed saying “da! da!” so I didn’t fight it, and we’ve all had better sleep since then! No patting, or singing, or rocking necessary, we just put him in our bed, and lie beside him until he falls asleep… which is usually only about 10 minutes.

I know some people think it’s crazy that he’s in our bed, and some people think it’s crazy that he’s not trained to just sleep on his own… but I really don’t care. At this point he is getting himself to sleep on his own, he rolls around and plays with his blanket and eventually falls asleep, I just have to be there, and it could be a lot worse.

I will say though that it would be a different story if we had separate rooms, I would definitely try a lot harder, but since he’s in our room, he’s a lot harder to ignore at night.

ANYWAYS, the reason I brought this up is because things have changed a bit J

In Canada we didn’t have a bed for him to go into if he wasn’t in the crib, and he’s pretty much ready for his own bed, so I didn’t see the point in trying to get him back into the crib anyways. Now that we’re back in Santa Marinella, there’s the crib upstairs AND another bed, with a baby rail – so my plan was to wait until we got back here and then transition him into a “big boy bed”.

We had a friend staying with us, so as a transition I started by doing nap time in the bed, and he didn’t seem to notice or be upset about it. We did for about 4 days, and it worked out great. So last night was our first night without our friend.

I sat Finn in his bed, read him his book while sitting on a chair, and then laid him town and turned off the light. Eventually I would like to just exit the room at this point, but I went back to the chair and sat beside his bed for a bit. He eventually stopped looking over for me every few minutes, but didn't seem to be falling asleep, so I slowly left the room, and he didn't even notice!

Conor and I watched a movie, we went to bed, and we woke up at 7:15 am!

Big Boy Bed success!! 1. He fell asleep without me in the room, 2. He slept through the night, 3. He slept IN IS OWN BED through the night!

I woke up a very happy mommy this morning. So on this thanksgiving weekend, as much as I'm sad that he's no longer a baby, I'm very thankful for my big boy!

Orvieto

**None of these pictures are mine - I forgot my camera!!**

On Wednesday night we decided to spend the day in Orvieto. Anne had been there before and loved it, so she knew that she wanted to go again during this visit. Thursday was Anne's birthday, so we decided to make that the day to go.

There isn't a WHOLE lot to see there, so we knew we didn't need to get up really early - plus Anne luckily had the train schedule from Rome to Orvieto and we saw that there was at least a couple hours between trains. So there was an 830ish and then a 1045ish - not to mention we still needed to get into Rome from Santa Marinella - so we quickly decided on the 1045 train.

I've lost the ball a bit, and was pretty unorganized, and therefore we were VERY close to missing our train - I had time to buy tickets for Conor and I, but We had to RUN to make the train so Anne didn't get to buy hers, thankfully we didn't meet any ticket inspectors. As I said at the beginning, none of these pictures are mine, because I forgot my camera in the rush - I just googled images for Orvieto.

The picture below is a good one - that's almost the view you get of it from the train just before you get to the station - pretty breathtaking.

You can drive up, or walk up if you're so inclined, or else you can pay a couple euro for the Funicular - it was awesome!

The Funicular and the view going up

I think that the main attractions there are the Cathedral, one of the chapels in the Cathedral and a couple of museums, he papal residence, and some ruins. We didn't have a whole lot of time, since we wanted to catch the 4 pm train, so we just did a pretty leisurely stroll. It's such a cute little town - with a lot of alleys like the picture below.

The first thing we did was walk up to the Cathedral - it was closed for lunch or mass or something, but we took a bit to look at the outside. If you click here you can read more about the outside facade, as well as the Chapels inside.

The main points of interest are the Chapel to the left called the Chapel of the Corporal - In 1263 a priest who was having doubts as to the legitimacy of the bread becoming Christ's flesh during the consecration, was saying mass and when he held up the hold it turned to flesh in his hands, and dripped blood onto the Corporal (the piece of cloth underneath the host and chalice) - this happened in Bolsena, but the Corporal is now housed in the Chapel in Orvieto.

The other Chapel, on the right, is the Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio - it was build in the 1400's and the artwork was started by Fra Angelica and Benozza Gozzoli, which depict the Apocalypse and the Last Judgement. You have to pay to see this Chapel, but it's well worth it!

After checking out the outside of the Cathedral, we went out for lunch. It was also Anne's birthday - so we let her choose (although we would have made her choose anyways, probably!!) We had a nice lunch, and then headed back to the Cathedral to look inside.

From there we went and looked at the view of the countryside - it was pretty amazing. The side of the town that we went on has a street coming up the side, and there were a few people walking up - they look tired so that reinforced my thankfulness for the funicular :)

We grabbed some gelati and then it was pretty much time to take the funicular back down to the station.

It's a great day trip place - and hopefully we'll go again something, maybe when we have guests again. After looking online I'd like to check out the ruins and some other things, so we might have to get up a bit earlier!

We're back online!

Our neighbor got his internet working after a week of it not working, and he graciously has given us the code, so we are back in business!

I'll do an update soon - we went to Orvieto today, it was beautiful!

Settling In

Our friend Eleonora came and picked us up from the train station and brought us to the hotel that her family owns and put us up in a room there. We are so so grateful to them. It was great not having to go into Rome at all in our jetlagged state! We got our stuff to our room and went to the grocery store (this is where I do wish I knew more Italian because it would have been nice to chat with the people who work there, who recognized us and said hi) grabbed some yogurt and fruit and ate a little lunch. We headed back to the hotel and had a good 2.5 hour nap.

That night was a bit of a going away thing for one of the guys who has lived here for a few years… it’s sad that he’s not staying this year, but it was nice to see him one more time. We entertained Finn with toys and baby Einstein until about 9:30ish and then I brought him upstairs for bath. Did I mention that when we woke him up from the nap he was grumpy? No? Because he was really really really grumpy… and remained that way for the rest of the evening! We were all happy to get to bed that night, at about 10pm, and my hope was that we would get 5 hours sleep before Finn woke up. And we did – at 3am he woke up, screaming, and I eventually calmed him down by playing Sudoku and solitaire on my iPod! Conor turned on the TV and was just flipping channels and then Finn snapped out of it and just started playing. I think we stayed up until around 5:30ish and then figured he was probably ready to sleep again, so we put away the toys, read some books and layed down and he went right to sleep… we had our alarms set for 8am to start getting back to Rome time, but pressed snooze for about 2 hours!!

That day we went and met up with our Aussie friends and their 5 kids who have moved to Santa Marinella (which we are soo excited for!!) – oh actually we had gone over to their place the day we landed, but this time we were checking our emails and they fed us some lunch and invited us for dinner.

I can’t believe how different our first days here are this time compared to last. It’s so great not being right in Rome, and even greater having friends who feed us!! We had another nap and then headed back there for dinner.

That night we managed to pretty much sleep through the night. At about 2 am I woke up and wasn’t tired, but I just laid there – Finn kept threatening to wake up, but I would just shhh shhh him and he would eventually fall asleep again. We got up at 7:30 and had some breakfast at the hotel.

At 1 our landlords met us at our apartment, we brought a couple of our suitcases, and after they left Finn and I had a nap while Conor went back to the hotel to get our last suitcase that was there, and then went to Eleonora’s where we had stored our stuff this summer. Eleonora and Kevin own the apartment across from their hotel, and it was kind of their moving day, as a friend of theirs was moving into their apartment and they had renovated another floor for them to move into. So they graciously, in between their move, packed up our stuff in their car and brought it to our place.

Finn has been enjoying getting acquainted with his toys! We put him to bed last night and played a few games and then went to bed ourselves. Unfortunately it’s 4:30am as I write this – guess I shouldn’t have had a nap yesterday!! Hopefully this will be the last night of jet-lag and hopefully this darn cold goes away soon!

Montreal to Rome

At the Montreal airport we stopped right away at Tim Hortons and got our last Iced Cap *tear* and then went to find some food – Air Canada domestic flights are so cheap they don’t even give you a bag of nuts without paying at least $3. We got some food and then made our way to our gate. The transfer was so smooth, on our way here, since Toronto was our first entry point into Canada we had to collect our bags and bring them to the transfer area as well go through security with all of our carry-ons again – this time we just went right to our gate. On the way we found an Air Canada person at a desk, so I went to see about hopefully getting three seats together. This flight had two aisles with two seats on the sides and three in the middle and we were booked with two seats on the side. Which is nice, but we knew from our last flight that way that it isn’t usually full, so if we took two seats in the middle, chances are no one would be booked for the other seat, or there would be a spare seat somewhere and we could ask them to move. But no need to even ask, because the plane had at least 10 empty seats, and one of them was right beside us :)

For this flight Finnian didn’t get out of his seat at all, except at the end and that was with one of us holding him. He just enjoyed having his own seats and playing with his books and toys. It was an 8 hour flight and at about 5 hours in he finally fell asleep. I laid him down on his seat and mine and the seat behind me was empty so I sat back there, we wanted him to sleep the rest of the flight. Unfortunately he woke up about an hour before landing and was VERY upset. He just screamed and screamed and cried and would not stop for anything!! I tried everything, finally I got Conor to take him for a bit because I needed to pack up our stuff and take the nasal spray again. At this point my nose was very congested and I started to get worried because I didn’t really feel the nasal spray kicking in like last time.

Eventually we opened up my laptop and turned on Baby Einstein for Finn and he calmed down. We had started our decent and my head was starting to hurt pretty bad. From there it just got worse and worse. The pain was mainly around my eyes, mostly on my forehead and it was not letting up. Finally it was landing time and we had to put my laptop away and Finn just started screaming and screaming again, but I couldn’t do a thing because my head was just killing me at this point. I fell like my eyes were going to pop out of my head – I could feeling crackling all around my eyes and on my cheekbones… I swear it was worse than labor. But I survived and by the time we were getting off the plane, I felt okay, but I probably looked horrible!

We took a shuttle to the baggage area and Conor collected our suitcases while Finn ran around. We didn’t have to wait too long and then we headed towards customs. So this was my main worry for this whole trip. As you may remember, we had a lot of problems last year getting our “permission to stay” and ended up giving up on the whole thing. Which meant that we were entering Italy with a student and family visa that would expire in about 6 days (they only issue it for one year, and the “permission to stay” is supposed to take over from there for the rest of the stay) and only the receipts for having applied for our “permission to stay”. Many many people told me that they have lived off just those receipts for years without ever getting the actual card, so I hoped we would have their luck.

And we did, we went through customs and all they did was look at ONE of our passports… no stamp, no checking for visa, no where close to asking us for our permission to stay cards. I was astounded, but really, we’re in Italy so it all astounds me. Later on someone told me that if you are white and don’t look poor, they just assume you are a tourist – therefore we wouldn’t even have a visa and they don’t really care.

We made our way to the train station and I think we were in Santa Marinella by 11:30ish am.

Vancouver to Montreal

Well I’m still surprised how smoothly our flights went.

Our first flight was Vancouver to Montreal at 8:50 am. Early flight yes, considering it takes about an hour to get to the airport, but we were thankful it was a domestic flight and not international, otherwise we would have had to been 3 hours early instead of 1! We had no traffic problems and no luggage problems! Always my biggest concern, going overweight on luggage, we did great with each piece, and it wasn’t even much of a headache packing. We had packed three suitcases, one for me, one for Conor and one for Finn, and then weighed them and only had to rearrange a few things.

Then we had some Timmies for breakfast and then it was time to say goodbye to Conor’s parents. Not as emotional this time as last time, but still a little sad! We went through security with no problems and then only had to wait a short while to board our plane.

About two weeks prior to this, Finnian had gotten a cold and I started getting a sore throat, but just at night, and nothing ever came of it… until the day before our flight! I already have bad sinuses and usually use nasal spray for a day or two before a flight to make sure that my sinuses are clear, so I got really worried. I did the nasal spray as usual, and the first flight was great. My ears popped fine and my head didn’t hurt at all. The only “problem” on that first flight was more of an annoyance than anything else. The plane had one aisle down the middle and then each side had three seats. Conor and I had aisle seats across from eachother, and I wasn’t sure how it would work out, but it worked out really well. (there were no empty seats on the plane, otherwise we would have tried to do some switching to get three seats to ourselves) Finn had a great time walking up and down the aisle and looking (read: stareing) at people, he would take his car and gently push it towards that back, and because of the angle the plane was at, it would go flying down the aisle. Eventually I had to get him on my lap for the food carts to go past, so I put 4 square (which he had never seen before) on the TV thing, and he watched and just calmly fell asleep. It was great, and even great, I feel asleep too! Until I felt a tap on my arm, and the guy in my row needed to go to the bathroom. Darn!

So I handed Finn to Conor, and I got up and let my guy out and sat back down for a sec. Finn fell right back asleep, so I was happy. Until the girl right beside Conor said “wow, this is bad timing I guess, but I have to go to the bathroom.” Double Darn! So I stood up, and took Finn back, in my arms, but I couldn’t sit back down yet because my guy wasn’t back. … and sure enough, Finnian woke up! Seriously, I should have said something, but couldn’t this girl at least wait until my guy was back! To top it all off, finally my guy came back and I sat down with Finn and he was happily watching 4 square and just sitting there calmly, and the girl beside Conor gets back (and couldn’t sit yet because the lady in their row was up now too) and then she starts talking to Finn (“Aww, poor kid, so tired, sorry” and other randoms) and he starts getting upset… bye bye sleeping baby, bye bye calm baby. Oh well, he ended up doing really well for the rest of that flight – but I would have liked for us both to have gotten a bit more sleep.

Landing went well, and we were on our way to our connection….

Back in Italy

We arrived safe and sound two days ago. I won't do a whole post about it now, but all flights, baggage, customs issues went VERY well... there were really only three incidents, and I'll fill you in later.

We've been staying at our friends hotel in Santa Marinella, which has been awesome, and we move back into our apartment today.

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers, keep them going for the next 8 months while we are here!