Indiana Idylls

Paul got Alex to bed at 6:30pm last night. Unheard of! Alex even kept to his nighttime routine of getting up to eat every 2-3 hours. If not for all the diaper leaks and changes, it would have been a pretty smooth night. To be repeated? We can only hope!

Tonight my parents took the THREE of us out to dinner at Johnny Carino's. It was Alex's first trip to a restaurant, and surprisingly, he received his first children's menu/activity book and crayons! I ordered for him, this time. We'll save the crayons until he gets the hang of his hands -- he's discovering them this week, but still can't deliberately and accurately bring them to his mouth.

We're celebrating our third anniversary today, but also Paul's Italian citizenship! Thanks to cousin Dave for bringing this to our attention through his own quest to have his Italian citizenship recognized. According to the principle of jure sanguinis (Latin for "by the right of blood," in this case, meaning the right to citizenship through one's bloodline or ancestry.), any person who can trace their lineage back to an Italian ancestor who was born in Italy and emigrated after 1861, has actually been an Italian citizen since birth, and can go about the business of securing the proper paperwork to become officially recognized as such. The two caveats, as I understand them, are 1) that citizenship could only be passed from parent to child if that child was born before the parent naturalized and 2) that a female could not pass on her citizenship to any children born before January 1, 1948. By way of example on my mother's side, my great-grandfather was born ...

Alex was baptized this morning in a lovely ceremony. Brian Oliver, a friend from Buffalo, was the godfather and Becca O'Hara, a childhood friend in Rome, was the godmother (though unable to make the trip -- she was missed!). It was a lovely ceremony and we had a full house for his party afterwards. I also have to include a picture of his cake. It's the first cake I've ever decorated and I'm pretty proud of it. Busia (Polish for grandmother and the family name for Paul's paternal grandma) had always made the baptism cakes for her grandchildren -- and now great-grandchildren! -- but it was more than a little infeasible for her to make one for Alex. I was happy to borrow her cross-shaped cake pan and received my very own cake decorating kit as an anniversary gift. Here's to many special occasion cakes to come! (Good thing I have four cups of icing leftover for practice.)

Walking and singing to Alex, I'm learning how very few songs I know, and how for some that I think I know, I only know a verse or two. I quickly exhaust -- or simply tire of -- my limited repertoire of children's songs, and so it was the other day that I started singing "There's no Business Like Show Business" to Alex -- anything to cheer him up. As it happens, he liked the song but I basically only know the title line and a handful of non-sequential other lyrics. Yesterday, again faced with an over-tired, unhappy baby, I thought to dig out the CD and have a listen. I've got the song on a compilation disc of favorite Broadway tunes. I jump to track five and Alex LOVED it. He immediately piped down and listened intently to the whole song. Next up: "Almost Like Being In Love," the classic ballad from Brigadoon . Alex resumed screaming. I skipped back to "There's no Business..." and he got real quiet again and fell asleep. He even let me p...

Alex and I took a more light-hearted approach to his "First Easter" outfit and dressed up like Easter eggs. Any excuse to wear the fabulous tie-dyed onesies and T-shirts that my cousin Mary in Tucson made for him. I wish more Tucson-like weather were in the forecast for us, but it's likely our "little man" will outgrow them before too much longer.

Alex and I were "playing", and it amused me to think that this little person grunting excitedly next to me would grow up to be more or less like me: probably go to college, get a job, find a nice girl, get married, and have some little grunters of his own. He can't even reliably get his hand to his mouth! You, me, the Pope, the President... we all started out this way! It boggles the mind.

Let's see if I can resurrect this after yet another hiatus, this one owed to the haze of new motherhood. I certainly don't have time to email, so perhaps I can keep everyone in the loop this way. I've just put Alex down for the third time tonight and am waiting to see if sleep sticks this time around. "Third time's a charm" doesn't generally apply to babies. Then again, "sleep" doesn't always apply to babies. It's a good thing they're so gosh darn cute. Tonight Alex was obviously very tired and was fussing -- crying, really -- pretty hard. Suddenly he got very quiet and yawned, as if to say he were tired of his own shenanigans, before starting back up as vigorously as before. Several many choruses of a taize prayer song later, I actually put him to bed drowsy and continued singing and he seems to have fallen asleep. I was feeling so proud of myself that I was sure he'd pop back up. It's been nearly 30 minutes now, though, so ...