Eighth Month.

Continuing the habit of celebrating your months in new countries, you see out your eighth month in France.

It is a month during which you've desperately tried to crawl. It started by you pushing yourself forward from sitting onto your tummy, and for the first few weeks you actually moved backwards! Eventually you got the direction right, but it is still just a shuffle around the living room floor. Staying on all fours is still just that bit too difficult!

Another new development is you shaking your head vigorously from left to right, most of the time with the widest possible smile! This little action clearly makes you very happy.

Solid food is now well established, to the point where you don't need any breastfeeding during the day anymore. Night time is still where the problem lies though, and the good progress we've made in Finale over the summer holiday is all but gone!

Then, on the 28th August, we notice first sign of a little tooth! This is a big event as it follows months of furious dribbling and of course speculation about when the first appearance will be. Could it be that it is because of this that the night time routine has gone backwards?

Holiday in France.

The little intrepid baby Iolanda is continuing her world tour by visiting her 5th country in just eight months! This time it is France on the itinerary and we are looking forward to a short break with some very good friends.

Kate's (wife of Alessandra's friend Fabio from University) family owns a large, beautiful countryside house near the town of Cahors and she invited an Italian contingent for a week of sunshine, good wine and lots of relaxing by the pool! Included in the group are Anna, Paulo, their 18 month old son Flavio and of course Emanuele.

The week is every bit as relaxing as promised with visits to the local farmers market, long walks in between swims and of course lots of Italian cooking. You are a bit sceptical of Flavio's show of affection as a nice caress always ends up as a soft slap! He calls you Danda, a name that we think suits you and that you might hear again once or twice!

Unfortunately your dad can only stay for the weekend, however your mom continues to make the most of her free time during maternity leave!

Seventh Month.

The first half of your seventh month is spent in Finale Liguria, Italy, on your first beach holiday. Apart from the fact that it is a beach holiday, we've all enjoyed this time immensely since it is the first time that you've started to sleep 7-8 hours per night!

As you developed over the months, you've become ever more friendly and it is now with lots of smiles that you greet every Italian person that comes close to your pram. During our daily trips to the beach, we start to get to know some of the regulars, and some of them come every day to say hello to you, and to remark on what a cute little baby you are!

Now that you are sitting well, you have a better view of your toys and that means that you enjoy playing with them a lot more. You especially like the obligatory bucket and spade, and as you are nice and cosey inside your little inflatable pool, it means that mom and dad can enjoy a few minutes in the sun as well!

There have also been developments with the eating process as you are now eating finely blended meat with your vegetables. Your dad, being from a meat-eating country himself, was especially impressed with this until he experienced the new smell in the nappy that goes with the meat diet!

Italian seaside holiday!

Beach babe!

Sun, sea, sand an delicious Italian gelati means only one thing, we are on our first seaside holiday as a family in Finale Ligure, Italy!
Finale is a small seaside town an hour outside of Genoa towards the French border. It originated as a fishermen village, but today it is very much about tourism. Your Italian side of the family has a very prominent place in this town's history as the Pertica's (your great-grandmother is Delia Pertica) were a very successful family of merchant sailors in the 1500's.

For the first two weeks it is just the three of us and we quickly fall into a very relaxing routine. In the morning we set up camp on the beach with our umbrella, towels and your little swimming pool, ready for a good few hours of playing. This is then interrupted by lunch and an afternoon nap (meaning your mom or dad pushes you in your pram along the beachfront to make you fall asleep!) before we all head back to the beach in the afternoon. The only bit of stress is when some of the Italians find you so cute that they have to come over and strike up a conversation with your dad, which basically means them talking a lot and your dad just saying "si, si" all the time!

As if by magic, you've also started to sleep very well at night! You still wake up once a night, but it is a vast improvement on the once every two hours that it used to be! Of course your parents are debating furiously as to what the magic formula is, but whatever it is, we hope it stays around for a LONG time!





The fact that you can sit by yourself now means that you can play in your little blow-up pool by yourself. However, you get tired quite quickly which of course means either getting you onto our towels (which means that you will end up in the sand!) or another stroll in the pram for a rest!



Playing in your little swimming pool.

 You also get a visit from your Nonno Gianfranco who organised a day trip to Balzi Rossi, a pre-historic site on the French border with a very nice beach. After a quick visit to the museum with remains from thousands of years before, it is back to the beach. With the exception of a day trip to the ancient town of Albenga, pretty much every day is spent on the beach which is a very nice change from the very unpredictable English summer! 

Balzi Rossi beach with Nonno.

Sadly Heino has to leave after two weeks to return to work. However, there is still plenty of company as your grandmother, great-grandmother and her carer comes to Finale for a visit. Especially now with so many extra hands to help, your mom enjoys a proper holiday!

4 generations of women: Pertica, Genderini, Foderaro and Von Wielligh!

But that is not all. Over a very hectic weekend your uncle Matteo and Benedetta come for a visit, and as you and your mom prepare to leave, Alessandra's Zio Augusto and her cousin Francesco arrives as well. Naturally you are the centre of attention, but all too soon it is time to return home to London.

Six Months.

You celebrate your first half year with a spoon-full of peaches! Just a few days before you turned 6 months in Rome, you started to eat solid foods. It is a very gradual process, started with some ripe, sweet Italian apricot and it looks like you like it a lot. This was followed by loads of other nice summer fruits like peaches, prunes and bananas.

A big improvement is that in your sixth month you started to sit by yourself for long periods without falling over. It was a long process, but it seems as if you like it, as long as you have some of your toys within reach!

As always, the only area that is still proving to be a problem is sleeping at night. However, you did recently manage 7 uninterrupted hours sleeping which is giving us a lot of hope! 

Nonna Mariapia's 60th birthday in Venice.

As if this isn't an important enough year with your arrival, it is also the year in which your Nonna Mariapia finishes her 6th decade!

Your mom has been planning for some time a get-together with you, herself, Nonna and your Uncle Matteo and his girlfriend Benedetta. When your grandmother was initially asked where she would like to go, the question very quickly and firmly came back: Venice!

Nonna Mariapia always found Venice to be a magical place, but exactly how special it was to her was only realised after all of you arrived there as you found out that she has bought a house on this ancient island!

 The birthday lunch itself took place on Isola della Giudecca in a restaurant with tables right on the Grand Canal! A fantastic view of the St. Marks bell tower rounded off a perfect setting for celebrating a special occasion, complete with a birthday cake with 3 candles, each representing 20 years!

Over the following days more sightseeing took place, as well as a visit to Murano to look for a chandelier for the new house. Venice already started to feel like home!

The famous St. Mark's square however, only got a fleeting visit since this great city is not exactly the most baby (buggy) friendly with all its steps, cobblestones and canals! However, many future visits are planned, especially around the well known carnival, as all of you get onto the train to Rome 3 days later, for your first journey by rail!

As is now becoming the norm, your second visit to Rome meant lots of visits to friends, but by far the most important was the visit to Valerio and Federico, twin boys of Sabrina and Raffaele and not even a month old! A very nice afternoon is spent with the Costa family and at the end all of the grown ups are again reminded of how fortunate they are to have such beautiful little human beings!

To cap a great trip for you, you experience for the first time food other than milk. A spoon of mashed apricot is met with great surprise by you, only seconds before it is eagerly gobbled up!

Baby Swimming.

Every Saturday is swim day for you, and it seems that you really enjoy it! Most of the time it is you and your dad in the water (apparently he is in charge of the physical education!) with about 5 other babies and the sweet Hungarian teacher. The lessons consist of a series of simple exercises, all accompanied by nursery rhymes sang (badly!) by the group.

The most amazing thing is the submersion bit! First it is a gentle vertical submersion, preceded by a "Iolanda, ready, go!" and down you go beneath the water! This is sometimes followed by lots of spluttering and coughs, but generally you are very good. A step up from this is where the teacher and Heino stands about one and a half meters apart, she submerges you and push you towards your dad who then catches you and bring you above water!

Some of your swimming friends include Edward, Rosinda, Margaret and a little boy that keeps on falling asleep in the water in his mom's arms! Needless to say, to your parents anyway, you are the best of them all!

Fifth Month.

Your greatest achievement of the past month is that you can roll over from your tummy! It is by no means easy, and it goes with lots of little moans, groans and cries, but the look of absolute satisfaction when you've done it is only outdone by the applause from your parents!

But this is not all! You can also sit by yourself for a good few seconds, even a minute or two at a push! This is always in a forward leaning position, and the fight is always either won by gravity or a huge poo! We've come to realise that this position is the optimal position for a loaded nappy.

It is also the month during which you've left your little moses basket behind for your cot. The base is still set at the highest level, but once again you have acres of space to move in, as opposed to the little basket that you've seriously outgrown!

Even the buggy had to be adjusted so that we always take you around in the seat as opposed to the pram basket. No more lying down as little Iolanda wants to see everything and be part of everything around her!

For your mom there was additional fun as well since she finally decided that it was safe to venture out for a night with her friends, leaving you in the care of your dad.
However, it has to be said that there is no improvement on the sleeping front! You still wake up every two hours or so, making night time extremely hard going!

But overall there is more than enough to make up for that! We've taken you for baby swimming, and you seem to enjoy that immensely! You've also finally doubled your birth weight, and to us you are just the most beautiful baby ever!

Spring in London.

After a period of hectic travelling, you finally spend a full month in London! The weather is not too bad, actually this is an understatement as it turns out to be the driest spring in decades! To celebrate this you host your first barbeque where all your little NCT friends are invited.
In the end it is a fun day with Tara, Simon and little William, Rachel, Mark and Kitty-Bee, Isabel, Steve and baby Charlie, Helena, James with little Joe and Jon, Lorne and Oscar. The only ones missing were Sinead, Liz and little Taihg as it was Sinead's birthday.
It was especially great to have all the dad's together again after the last few months!

Your dad's old friend Jane Evans and her 8 month old son Oliver also came over to meet you for the first time. The two of you had great fun in your little gym!

But soon the ants in the pants dictate that we can't stay in London all the time, so a daytrip is planned for the May Day Bank Holiday. The destination this time is Hever Castle, famous for being Ann Boleyn's childhood home. We spend the day with Fabio and Kate, and also Aiden with his daughter Siorche. It was great fun to wander around the beautiful gardens and to circumnavigate the lake.

If this is spring, we can't wait for summer proper to begin!

Fourth month.

As with most of these first months, it has been a month full of changes! However, we will remember it as the month of the big weight gain! At first your weight gain has been very slow, to the point where you started to slip down the various growth curves, but with the additional 200 ml of formula milk we give you every day, you've reached almost 6 kg by the end of this month!

It's also been a great month of travelling. Out of the whole month you've spent only 5 days at home in London! The rest of the time you were in Namibia where you've met your African family for the first time, and also to Italy for Easter.

You start to be really good fun as well, and your little smiles just light up the room! What makes it even more enjoyable is that you've started to respond, meaning that a smile on demand is now quite easy, especially in the morning.
You've always been quite a strong baby, but now you keep your head up very well. We sometimes put you on your tummy, and the way you keep your head upright like a little meerkat is just too cute for words!

One area that is still not improving is your sleeping pattern. Some nights you still wake up EVERY hour, making it extremely exhausting for your poor mom! But as if to compensate for this, you seem to have grown accustomed to the changing table, and the terrible screams with every nappy change are no more. As always you still enjoy bath time a lot, but for some strange reason you have gone completely off dummies! Whereas at first you could be calmed down with a good suck on your dummy, you just won't have any of that now!

And finally, to round off a great, adventurous month, you've also seen the sea for the first time! Judging by the big smiles when you saw the great blue for the first time, you've definitely inherited the Italian's love of the seaside!

Easter in Rome.

Even though you've just arrived back from Africa, it is time for you to hit the road again! This time it is your first trip to Rome in Italy to spend Easter with your grandmother and Uncle Matteo. Of course you will also be dragged right across Rome and beyond to meet various members of the family, as well as your mother's huge circle of friends! Nonna Mariapia borrowed a little cot, bath, and a baby chair so the house in Rome is well set up to welcome you!

with uncle Matteo

Right from the start you are spoilt rotten by your uncle Matteo and his girlfriend Benedetta who are very enthusiastic babysitters, and just love to have you in their arms! Easter is celebrated in the village of San Giovanni near Viterbo as this is where Zio Franco, your great-grandmother Delia's brother, lives. Not only do you meet Zio Franco, but also all his friends from the village!

Friends from the village of San Giovanni

Back in Rome you get to meet your mum's best friend since childhood, Silvia, and her family. Everybody finds you to be "molto simpatica", a very nice baby!

With Silvia

Pasquetta, or Little Easter, is an Italian tradition where everybody goes for a picnic on the Monday after Easter Sunday. This is then where you meet all of your mom's other friends, mostly from University. Quite a few of them have babies as well although they are all just a bit older than you. Hopefully you will all be just as good friends as your parents are!

Pasquetta

Little friends: Flavio,Michele,Luca,Viola

With Pasquetta over, you also receive a few home visits, much like a little royal princess! Alessandra's friends Gianluca and Stefano, Francesca and her boyfriend (also!) Stefano and of course Zio Manu are amongst those that popped around to see you. As nonno Gianfranco is in Rome as well, you all make a trip to just outside Rome where uncle Manu's family lives.

with Gianluca and Stefano and Emanuele

And yet all the visits are not over! Last but not least on the list is Sabrina, Raffaele and their young boy Edoardo who lives in Cerveteri. Sabrina is pregnant with twin boys who will be born in June, adding to the list of little friends with whom you can play over the years to come!

with Sabrina's family

It was a really full, but enjoyable few days, but all too soon it is time to return to London where your papa is waiting eagerly for his little family! This was the first time that you have been so far away from him, and understandably he simply can't wait to see you again. And so the time comes to say goodbye to all in Rome and board the plane back to your home in London.