Kiss me, I'm Italian.

T's school year is winding down, which means it's time for the annual Follies night. After months of covert planning & practice, last Friday the Carlson School MBAers convened to poke fun at themselves and each other via skits and songs. Last year I missed it and the opportunity (once in a lifetime, I'm told) to see my husband perform in leather pants. I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.



T was every bit the rockstar of the evening, even without the leather pants. Luca also made two special appearances, both of which showed off some classic Italian traits: an eye for the ladies, and an ability to grow facial hair.





Our little Italian not only made his bigscreen debut this weekend; he also received his first kiss. Actually, kisses - from sweet little Annie Grossman. I can't blame her for finding him irresistible.

He's Baaaack...

We enjoyed a mostly quiet week. Spring made a welcome appearance, and we were lucky to have our first Pepitos dinner with Evie Backer, plus Sunday dinner with Papa. And to our great relief, Luca has recovered his pre-illness personality and appetite.

 

What day is it? What's that in my hair?

This weekend, in the middle of an otherwise lovely visit from Omi, we were treated to a new experience: the rite-of-passage ER trip. It went something like this:

Friday p.m.: Luca suddenly turns into Lobster Red Luca. We pretend nothing is happening, and go to Chiang Mai Thai for dinner.

Later Friday p.m.: We realize our parental error when we get home and find that Luca's temperature is setting personal worst records. A terror-stricken call is placed to the on-call nurse line and out come the infant Tylenol drops.

Saturday a.m.: On the advice of the on-call nurse, we get an appointment with the pediatrician. She diagnoses Luca with a virus and an ear infection and prescribes antibiotics. He's fixed!

Saturday p.m.: He is not fixed. He's a lobster again. Even his eyeballs have turned lobster. We take his temperature and are terrified to find that it is over 105. Another discussion with the on-call nurse verifies that we need to head to the ER without delay. So that's what we did.





As you can see in the pictures, once the triage nurse gave our brave little smidge a dose of the aptly-named Motrin Elixir, he started to snap back to his usual self. We weren't quite out of the woods yet, but today he appears to be at about 75% and getting better all the time. Unfortunately, because of all the hullaballoo, we have very little photographic evidence that Omi was here to help us through it all, so you'll just have to take our word for it.

Luca at 9 months

This weekend the three of us took a walk to run some errands, and headed in the same direction that T & I went 9 months ago, the night before Luca arrived. This time, we bypassed the ice cream parlor and went for the toy store instead. Isn't it amazing what a difference 9 months makes? He's now been out as long as he was in...and in another 9 months, Luca will probably be talking us into both the ice cream and a toy, if he likes dessert as much as he likes everything else.

Since we last discussed his self-feeding skills, Luca has had a complete breakthrough which came about after we watched Lily Ward eating pasta on Riona's blog. Feeding our little Italian one of his native foods had never occured to us, but all of a sudden it made perfect sense. So at the next opportunity, we set a bowl of rotini in front of him and boy did he ever know what to do with it. Now he's grabbing up cheerios, puffs, broccoli, and bananas - and even snatching the noodles out of our soup bowls.



All of this chowing down has not translated into a bigger boy, though. In fact, our doctor told us this week that Luca is on the "skinny kid" trajectory. He weighed in at 19.5 lbs (just 1.25 lbs more than at 6 months) and is 28 inches long. The doctor isn't worried at all and said just to keep doing what we're doing because Luca is developing normally in every way.

Of course, we don't think there's anything normal about our favorite little man. This month he has figured out how to clap and wave at the right times and is very enthusiastic about it. He's a social baby; in the grocery store, he hollers from his post in the cart to all the passerby to get their attention. For now his conversation is limited mostly to "baaah! blaaah! pthththth," but when he says it, he means every word!