April 2, 2012

Ben is getting a tooth!  I can actually see two, but the one on the left is closer, and I can feel it poking out a bit.  I’ve been expecting one “any day now” for 3-4 months, but the later the better for me feeding him.  I think he is handling it pretty well.  He was a little fussy all day Sunday, and we first noticed it Sunday afternoon.  But, him being fussy is nothing new, and this is no worse than his normal bad days.  I sent him to daycare Monday with Tylenol, and they said he did okay.

 Not the best picture, but you can kind of see them. The one on his left is cut through, can't tell about the other.

 

Sunday morning Tim went to the airport for his first business trip as a Sales Engineer.  He is headed to Korea, returning Friday. 

After dropping Tim off, Ben and I met some friends for lunch at Trattoria San Salvatore, an old monastery on the summit of Mount San Salvatore overlooking Lago Maggiore (the same lake we drove around a month ago.)  It was a really neat place, with the main building and separate little chapels with beautiful frescos and grottos all between 500 and 1000 years old.  It was a steep and winding drive to get there, but the view was incredible.  The food was really good too.  We had beef, veal, sausage, and rabbit.

Trattoria San Salvatore

Frescos in the chapel

 

The view of Lago Maggiore from the restaurant patio.

I recently booked two trips for this month.  This weekend, Easter, we are going to Florence for three days.  We are staying in centro so we can walk to everything.  They have a festival for Easter called Scoppio del Carro (Explosion of the Cart), with a parade and fireworks.  Then, we have a couple holidays at the end of April and first of May, and I booked five days in Rome.  Again, we will stay in centro to be close to everything.  We plan to do all the normal tourist things.

On Saturday, we walked to the park, the gelateria, the grocery store, and the pharmacy.  The park did not have baby swings, so there was not much Ben could do.  They did have one of those animals mounted on a spring that had a seat he could sit on. 

Ben in the park

Next, we had several gelato places to choose from.  I know of at least 6 in the few city blocks of the center, and three more within a few blocks of our apartment (which is only a few blocks from the center).  Tim always tries to say that we don’t need it, but I’ve been able to convince him that we do, about once per week.  We have to keep trying until we decide which one is best!  This place coated the inside of the cone with chocolate fondue, and they had a really good dark chocolate flavor.

On this particular trip to the grocery store, I bought a liter of milk and a liter of wine, and the wine was a few cents cheaper.  And, at just over a Euro, they are both cheaper than our 1.72 €/liter gas.  I also bought Ben’s first jar of baby food.  I decided he needed fish because it’s good for the brain, but I didn’t want to make it at home.  Someday I will start making fish for all of us at home, but I’m not ready for that yet.  The farmacia was for allergy medicine.  My normal springtime allergies hit me full force on Saturday, but they had Claritin and Zyrtec over the counter, so all is well.

The weather has been beautiful.  It’s been in the 70s since we got back from the States, and things are really starting to turn green and bloom.  Unfortunately, it is cloudy today, and it is supposed to rain the rest of this week.  I guess they have April showers over here too.