Halloween then and now

Here was Eva's first halloween--look closely to see her in the incubator.



And here was our halloween this year! What a difference a year makes...

Eva turns one

Eva and the apple

Eva encountering her first apple, picked during her first trip to an orchard. Watch her progress as she goes from thoughtfully considering to eating.

(the title was was too good to resist :)

Eva then and now

Happy birthday Eva!

After a several month long hiatus from blogging, we are back to celebrate Eva's first birthday: friday, October 24. Thanks to anyone who is still checking in with us at this point, and thanks to all of you who have been watching Eva's progress this year and cheering for her along with us.

It's been a wild couple of months: we left Florence at the end of June and moved back home to Ann Arbor. In the whirl of being back in our families and introducing Eva to everyone, packing and unpacking, looking for jobs and starting to work, not to mention trying to keep up with Eva as she grows by leaps and bounds, we've been pretty well occupied. We want to keep the blog going, especially for all of our family and friends who are watching Eva grow from afar, so please do keep checking in.

The GREAT news is that one year down the road from Eva's sudden and dramatic appearance in the world, she is flourishing! She couldn't be doing better. All of the numbers are good (verified by the doctor today), she is on the growth charts for her chronological age, and the doctors couldn't be more pleased with where she is today:

length today: 27 3/4" (3rd percentile for 12 mo.)
birth length: 14"

weight today: 17 lb. 5 oz (5th percentile for 12 mo.)
birth weight: 2 lb. 3 oz

In addition, she is developing right on target for where she should be--she's saying and doing the things a 9 month old should be saying and doing (which is her adjusted age), so they're also very pleased with that. And let me tell you that WE are also very pleased with that! Eva grows daily more delightful. She is smiling, babbling, exploring all day long. She is both very laid back and a girl of very strong opinions. If she doesn't want to do something (for example, eat from a spoon), she will NOT. She doesn't usually make a fuss about it, but she just won't do it.

She is still very easily comforted and occupied. She is interested in EVERYTHING. She spends the whole day exploring with her hands--she taps with her fingers and pats with her hand everything that she sees. The combination of her contentedness and her interest in patting and tapping everything, no matter how small, mean that she's not very interested in crawling. She can wiggle around, but usually she's not enticed enough by something far away to try to crawl and get it. Instead, she finds something nearer at hand to be interested in. So she's not so into crawling, but she LOVES to walk. She can balance herself well when she's standing up and has some support behind her, and she'll walk all day long if someone will hold her hands and help her cruise around.

I could go on and on....but I'll let this be for now. I'm trying to upload more pictures, but blogger seems to be having some difficulties....stay tuned for the latest photos.

Happy birthday, Eva!

Grandpa's birthday

We celebrated Christi's dad's birthday just after we returned home--the bib says it all.

Eva and Liam

This was the first time Eva met her cousin Liam--obviously they took an immediate liking to each other!

Gelato comes with the summer

This is Eva's delighted expression captured after she had her first taste of gelato--stracciatella (similar to chocolate chip)--although, to be honest, there remains some doubt about whether any of it actually reached her taste buds or whether she pushed it all out with her tongue first.





The aftermath...

Glad to be home again

What is coming home if not fond reunions with loved ones? Bill captured the tender moment this morning between Eva and Geoffrey, her favorite green giraffe.

Eva and the Pope

If you look closely, you can just see Papa Bene in his window--top floor, second from the right, just above the red banner. Eva got to see him and hear his voice for the first time as we stood in the square with thousands of pilgrims to Rome and prayed with him and received his blessing.

**if you click on the picture, you can see an enlarged version of it**

Eva in Rome

We finally made it to Rome! Rome was our second home last year (our first year of living in Florence), but with all of the events of the past few months, we hadn't been able to go ourselves or to take Eva to Rome until this weekend. Eva was, naturally, a dream. She took in stride all of the stresses of travel and meeting new people and seeing new places and responded with her usual interest and good cheer and patience. The weekend also brought her first taste of real Italian sun and heat, but that didn't seem to bother her much.

It was a full weekend combining traditions of things that we always do when we're in Rome (like tranquil mornings in the garden of our friends' apartment, leisurely enjoying coffee) along with visits to new places (like the Museum of Modern Art, which in Rome includes the 19th century :). Added to that were the memories of our times there over the past 4 years as well as making new ones this weekend with Eva.

I'll be turning this weekend over in my mind for a long time. It brought a fitting closure to much of my life here in Italy. I arrived in Rome nearly 4 years ago, but from what a different life! My brother Tim had passed away only a few months before, and I had just started to get to know Bill, to mention only the most major differences. And now here I am, one month before returning home to stay but married to Bill and with a 7-month-old baby after 2 years in Rome and 2 in Florence. Italy has been a essential part of all of these changes, so being in Rome gave me the chance to see again and be grateful again for all of what the last 4 years have brought.



Here is Eva in St. Peter's Square with one of the new friends of the weekend: Fr. Benjamin Sember, the second youngest priest in the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin (his identical twin brother, Fr. Joel Sember, holds the record of youngest priest in the diocese by 2 minutes). Fr. Benjamin has been ordained almost one year and will be returning home this summer after finishing his license in Canon Law. He and Eva hit it right off, enjoying the square and a walk along the Gianicolo hill.



Even though she slept on the floor and slept in a new place, she still slept through the night!



Eva and our friend Mary--look at the sturdy legs on Eva! This was right after the first big heat wave hit and for the first time we had to get her down to just her onsie. Also notice in the background the essential Roman (and Italian) characteristics: graffitti on the closer wall, a roadside shrine to Mary on the far wall.



Eva and I went to Rome a day ahead of Bill so we could visit the Angelicum, aka :) the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, on Friday morning. I spent 2 years studying theology and philosophy here, finishing the second year of studies just 2 months before Bill and I were married. It was a delight to be able to take Eva there and introduce her to all of the professors and to friends who are still studying there. Here we are in the courtyard of the Angelicum with Jona Serie, Heidi (Fenton) Keiser and Mary Nolan, 3 of my great friends of these years.

New favorites

These were taken on Sunday, Mother's day, which was also la festa della Mamma in Italy. Eva was looking spiffy in a new dress and her first pair of shoes (thanks, Therese!) which are just peeking out in the middle picture--lovely pink satin ballet slippers tied with pink ribbons.

Happy Mother's Day

Notice our expressions below: like mother like daughter? :)

Big girl in the stroller

We recently started putting Eva to sit in the stroller facing outward. Previously she was in the baby carrier attached to the stroller so that she looked up at us when we strolled about town. However, from the very first time she LOVED her new vantage point. She loves being able to look out at the world and observe life going by.

We combined that big step with the buying of a new sun hat. We deliberatly bought a bigger size than she needed to allow for adequate room for head growth. When plotted on the height and weight growth charts for a 6-month-old, she's actually not yet on the chart, but her head is 10th percentile for 6 months. However, for a 3-month-old (her adjusted age), she falls inn the 50th percentile for height and weight and the 90th!! for head circumference. Hearing this, we thought it would be advisable to leave room for growth in the hat...

La bambolotta

I was standing in line at a bakery recently when an elderly man next to me turned around and saw Eva in the baby sling. He leaned in to see her face and then exclaimed delightedly, "Ma, una bambolotta, lei! Dove l'ha comprata--alla fiera?" (She's a doll! Where did you buy her--at the fair?) :) Maybe she looked something like this that particular day...

Heads up!

Amazing what a difference a few weeks can make. The picture above was taken perhaps 6 weeks ago, and the one below just a couple of weeks ago. Every day Eva grows stronger. She now holds her head up and looks all around as if she's been doing it since she was born. She's still small, but she's strong. She loves standing up and is trying as hard as she possibly can to roll over. New delights every day!

Eva's first train ride

About 3 weeks ago we went to spend Sunday with our friend Luigi who lives a 1/2 hour train ride outside of Florence. It was a big day for all of us: it was Eva's first train ride (I think it's clear how much she enjoyed it), and it was our first time to get out of the city since we came back to Florence in the fall. It was also one of the first absolutely beautiful spring days that we had--warm and sunny but with a strong breeze. We all came back with sunburns!



This is Eva and Luigi. Bill and I met Luigi last year--he was sitting at a table next to us in a restaurant and we struck up a conversation that led to a friendship. He is 83 or 84 and was widowed recently, but even so has an amazing gusto for life and also for making new friends. The lunch guests on this day were a really interesting group: Bill, Eva, me, and our friend Jona who was visiting from Rome, and then 3 other people. Patricia is a Mexican artist who now lives in Florence. Luigi met her recently on a train and he invited her to come to lunch with her friend Lorenzo, a master printer with whom she works. The last person of the group was a woman named Elisa whom Luigi met at the market last year and whom he now depends on to help arrange the lunches and other things he hosts.

Along with an interest in new people, Luigi reads in English (his nephew wrote a book called "The Waltz of the Planets" which he is currently reading), is writing the biography of one of the Medici villas outside of Florence, and is among the Friends of the Uffizzi, going frequently to new exibitions and lectures at the museums in Florence. He is one of the great gifts of our time here.

Life is good!

Eva at rest and in motion

Every day she's doing more of both--sleeping and moving. Last night she only woke up once to eat--almost a record!--and every day she's more active too. She loves to stand up, and she is so strong that she can stand up straight, balanced on my legs, with me just holding her hands. Her neck is strong enough that she can hold up her head and look around for long periods of time. She's talking more and more too. She's discovered that she has volume--she can whisper or shout--and she and I just had our first real conversation just a couple of days ago. Her eyes lit up as we were repeating sounds back and forth to each other and I could tell that she knew we were talking--knew we were taking turns saying things to each other.

New wonders every day...

Under the Tuscan sun

Some photos from one of our recent walks which take us into the countryside just on the outskirts of Florence.

Family photo