Visiting your Great-Grandmother in Milan.

Alessandra's grandmother, therefore your great-grandmother Delia, turned 90 years old last year, a great achievement for somebody who lived through the terrible Second World War!
Due to her advanced age, we want to make sure that you meet her as soon as possible. Now that we have your passport, the time is here and the plan is for Heino to fly with you and your mom, stay for the weekend and fly back on the Sunday to be back at work on Monday. It is a busy week that lies ahead for you with lots of meetings planned with various parts of the family and friends.

From the airport we go straight to Bisnonna Delia's house and you are just a model of good behaviour with lots of smiles and kicks in your pram. Needless to say your great-grandmother immediately falls in love with you! Surprisingly, she is also very good with you and can't get enough of singing and chatting to you! It is clear to see that the mothering instincts is still very strong, even after ninety years of living!

Later in the afternoon, Alessandra's uncle and aunt, Zia Stefania and Zio Augusto come over to say hello as well. This is only a small flavour of what is to come as tomorrow's schedule includes a trip to the town of Cremona to meet the family there.

Zia Stefania and Zio Augusto

On Saturday we arrive in Cremona at  Zio Vitto and Zia Vittoria's house just in time for lunch. This now is your Nonno Gianfranco's cousin and they have always remained very close over the years. Joining us for lunch is also Zio Vitto's son, Giuseppe and his wife Claudia. Everybody is very happy to meet you and detailed discussions take place as to which parent you resemble the closest! Equally good is lunch itself! Consisting of very typical local products such as ham, cheese, salami and wine, it is not long before we simply cannot eat anymore.

Obviously you will not allow food to take any attention away from you! Frequent bursts of crying force us to take you on little tours of Zio Vitto's house but luckily there are loads of interesting things to see such as antique furniture, ornaments and lovely old paintings. Very different from our house in London that is STILL awaiting something on it's bare, white walls!

 

After the sumptuous lunch it is time for a short stroll to Zia Annadina (Zio Vitto's sister) and Zio Tino's house. It is clear that this day is getting a bit long for you and that you are very tired. Luckily there is time for a quick toast of delicious Prosecco wine in your honour, followed by Heino getting a viewing of Zio Tino's extensive weapons collection. It is very impressive and the sight of an authentic American Winchester rifle straight out of a Western movie is enough to transport Heino back to his youth playing Cowboys and Crooks on the farm! It is with regret that we have to leave, however it is really time to get you to bed.

With Zia Annadina and Zio Tino

For Sunday lunch we visit Zio Augusto and Zia Stefania's house where you meet your cousins Francesco and Giovanni. Their Nonna Benita is also there and she is equally enthusiastic about you. About a thousand photographs later it is time for your dad to get the bus back to the airport and his flight to London. This is the first time that he will be away from you for so long, and it is with a heavy heart that he gives you a final kiss.

With Zia Lalla and Zio Carlo

The rest of the week is spent mainly with your Bisnonna Delia, but also a flurry of visits to amongst other Zia Lalla and Zio Carlo, Paola and Raffaella Bonetti, Antonio Foderaro and finally Italia, a lady of 98 years who used to be best friends with your great-grandmother Lilli (mother of Nonno Gianfranco).



With Paola Bonetti



In piazza Duomo

 
On a sunny winter's morning you get your first tour of Milan. A long walk from your Bisnonna Delia's house to the Duomo brings you in contact with the first of what will be many amazing Italian monuments!



Second month.

There can't be that many people that can say they've celebrated their second month on earth in the sky on a plane! On the 4th March, exactly two months after your birth, we are all on an Alitalia flight from London to Milan.

The big change of your second month is that, from your sixth week, you've slept in your own little room. You still wake up every 3 hours, but now you settle back to sleep quite quickly which is a massive improvement from the one hour plus you used to take to get back to dreamland!

You still have your weekly baths, but something that is still unchanged are the shrill screams that accompany your trips to the changing table!

First suntan!

You had your check-up with the GP and everything was fine, as well as getting your first jab of vaccination. Of course this jab caused a terrible scream from you, but afterward you were fine and back to sleep in your pram. 

During your second month you also got your first passport, as well as reaching the weight of 4.2kg, roughly 1kg heavier than your birth weight. From about seven weeks you started to give us some small smiles, something which caused us immense happiness! Generally you are starting to play a lot more with your hands, making new sounds and those little legs of yours kick ferociously in your basket. We can see you becoming a good runner already!

There have been a few changes in your facial features as well, most of all your eyes that are growing bigger by the day. Worryingly (especially for your dad who will carry the blame!), you are losing your hair! Despite numerous assurances that this is normal, we've gotten into the habit of almost counting all the hairs on your little head!

You also get around a fair bit! You and your mom continue to meet up with the other moms and babies in our NCT group as well as the group of Italian moms and babies and you even got onto the tube all the way to Chalk Farm to visit Alessandra's former colleagues at the Chassay and Last Architectural firm. To top it all of a visit was taken to Mile End where you met Alessandra's current colleagues at the Queen Mary University of London.

NCT group

Italian mums

It has been a good and happy month for all three of us. To us, you are growing more and more beautiful every day!

Your first flight.

After all the hard work to get your passport sorted, we waste no time to plan your visit to your 90 year old great grand mother Delia in Milan. We get time booked off and flights booked for the weekend of 4 March and for now the plan is for Heino to stay for a long weekend and you and your Mom to stay for a short week till Thursday 9th March. At the  end of this week your Nonno Gianfranco will travel back with your mom as traveling with a young baby and luggage is definitely a two-person job!

Also, this short trip will be a very important test run for the much longer journey to Namibia!

 

The flight is with Alitalia from Heathrow Airport and we get a very early tube to Heathrow to do all the check in procedures with plenty of spare time. Everything goes smoothly and once past the security checks it is time for a breakfast and a feed for you before your flight. Luckily we can keep the pram/buggy up until we enter the plane and before we know it we are in our seats with all the hostesses cooing and oohing over you!

The flight is surprisingly easy. There is a very short cry at the beginning of take off, but after this it is back to sleep with no further problems. We've heard scary stories of how babies have ear pain due to different pressures, but thankfully there is no sign of this.
All in all we are very pleased with how the flight went and as we go through the arrivals doors your Nonno Gianfranco is there waiting for us and your first visit to Italy can begin!

Italian visitors

Alessandra and her friend Fabio have been trying for months to try and get her good friend, Emanuele, to visit them in London. Finally, after many false alarms and hopes, Emanuele finally managed to get himself onto a plane from Rome for a visit to London over the weekend of 12-13 February. We suspect that the fact that Marzia and Federico, more friends of Alessandra, also visited London on that weekend had a lot to do with persuading Emanuelle to take the big leap!

Since Marzia and Federico visited us already, they will be sleeping at Fabio and Kate's house whilst Zio Emanuele will be braving your nightly cries by staying with us!

Friday after they've arrived, is spent playing with you in your little chair. That night, feeling adventurous, we go to a local pub for a (very quick) drink. 

Saturday afternoon Marzia and Fede go to watch Italy playing rugby against England with Kate and Fabio. Alessandra and Ema spent the morning shopping in Clapham for that nights dinner to which everybody, including Agnese, is invited.

Your Zio Emanuele is a very good cook and he spends all afternoon working his magic on a very typical Italian meal:    Pasta al fume (tomato sauce,cream a bacon), polpettone (a big long meat ball) with salad and a fantastic tiramisu.

It turns out to be a very pleasant evening, apart from little Iolanda absolutely refusing to go to sleep until after midnight! It is for us quite a big shock as we've not struggled this much to get you to bed since your birth and a firm decision is made to start working on a stricter routine from next week!

Ema Ale and Iolanda

On Sunday the end of a very good weekend is celebrated with a Sunday Roast at the Avalon Pub in Clapham South. You are very good and fast asleep for most of it in your pram. This weekend you were immersed in the Italian language. Hopefully you found your mom's lifelong friends worth learning Italian for!

Your passport.

With family eager to meet you scattered all over the world, it is time to start the process of formalising your existence by registering your birth and eventually getting you your first passport. Your dad, used to speedy (not!) African bureaucracy, decides that there is no time to waste as our first family trip to Namibia is planned for the end of March!

Things don't get off to a good start when we are told on the 10th of January that the first available slot to get your birth certificate is on the 7th February! Either a massive amount of babies get born in the Lambeth borough of London, or the process is going to be as slow as feared! This however gives us more time to research the passport situation. In today's multicultural world things are not as easy when it comes to nationality and in your case it is particularly complicated as you are entitled to FIVE different passports: Italian, Namibian, German, South African and British! In the end, after lots of research, we decide that the British option will be quicker and make more sense as you will be growing up in Britain after all. It doesn't stop us from making appointments with the Italian and German embassies as a fail safe though!

On the 7th February we arrive at the Lambeth Town Hall at just after 9 am for our 9.30 appointment. A friendly lady approach us while we wait to help us fill in the forms for your Child Benefit. Yes, you've not done single second's work in your life, but you are going to get paid £20 a week!

After this is done another nice man of Oriental origin shows us to his office and begins in a very efficient manner to complete the necessary paperwork. Just after 10 am we leave Lambeth Town Hall with Iolanda von Wielligh's Birth Certificate!

Now for the passport. Our appointment at the Victoria Local Passport Office is on the very next day and for the last month or so Heino has been struggling to get all the necessary paperwork and evidence together. As your parents are European and not British passport holders, one of them have to provide evidence of employment over the last 5 years. With your dad's superior filing system this responsibility fell on him!

Not superior enough it would seem! Tuesday 8th February starts very early again with us in the queue at the passport office and after quite strict security checks, we are facing a (nice enough) young man who is inspecting Heino's paperwork in minute detail. He is not interested in seeing you, all cute and gurgling in your little chair, at all and at one point even says that it was not necessary for us to bring you! What he is interested in is the fact that there are a few months of Heino's work history over the last 5 years missing. And no, it doesn't matter that there is a letter of employment, contract and bundles of payslips!

Three days and numerous phone calls later Heino is back in the passport office with copies of the missing paperwork! Luckily he also managed to find the first German passport issued to him as the official (quite understandably!) wanted to have prove that this person born in Namibia is in fact a genuine German Citizen! Fortunately everything is in order this time and after he paid the (non-refundable) £110 fee, there is nothing left than to wait!

And a surprisingly short wait it turned out to be! After the application was submitted on the 10th February, a quick phone call on Monday 14th informs us that the passport is ready for collection. Still disbelieving, Heino decides to put it to the test and at 6pm that night he collects what must be the first United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland passport issued to a Von Wielligh!

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Nonno Gianfranco's visit.

You've met your grandpa, Nonno Gianfranco, for the first time just after you were born. However, he could not resist to visit you again just after your the end of your first month. We suspect it is also a check up on whether you are growing well or not, and also how your parents are doing with this great new adventure!

He immediately notices that there are quite a few changes. You open your eyes much more than when he last saw you, and overall you are more alert. To help you along on the journey of life, he personally selects quite a few classical songs on the online playlist we've created for you. This is massively helpful as it has to be admitted that neither of your parents are particularly talented when it comes to music!

To round of the first night of his visit, we celebrate the passing of your first month with a small cake. You however, know none of this as you are already fast asleep in your Moses basket!

We continue the exploration of first experiences with your first journey on the tube. This is to take you (joined by your mom's friend Ruth) for your first visit to a museum, the Imperial War Museum near Elephant and Castle. As can be expected you are not too interested in the various displays of tanks, cannons, planes and even a massive V2 rocket fired at London by the World War 2 Nazis!

Valuable lessons were learned though. First of all was the realisation that London is not very accessible by anything that is not propelled by its own two legs! Your buggy has to be carried by hand up and down various flights of stairs to get up to streetlevel again. Secondly is that excursions have to be carefully planned around your feeding time, as the shellshocked bus passengers found out when you, at full voice, started to demand your lunch!

All in all it was a very good weekend. Your nonno was very happy to see you again, and your parents started to learn how to go about normal life with their most precious piece of luggage by their side!

 

First month.

                                                                                                                                                    

And so on the 4th February 2011 we reach the end of your first month... and what a month it's been!

Your daily activities are quite basic, and not so numerous, but it is not to say that it does not fill the day! It is a general routine of breastfeeding, changing (which you absolutely hate!), some time kicking about on your play mat on the living room carpet and then it starts all over again. Within this cycle you tend to change from a peaceful, adorable little baby to a very loud, crumpled face but still adorable little baby!



Beautiful, peaceful little baby girl...



Screaming little monkey!!



Despite this you are generally quite good, and slowly but surely we can see how you are developing. Throughout this first month your weight has gone from your birthweight of 3.250kg down to 3.080 kg, up to 3.190 at 22 days and finally to 3.40kg at one month old. Your mom is still resolutely sticking to keeping you on breastfeeding alone, despite Heino's regular pleas for the mercy of a formula bottle!





You are the size of two books!



But the month has also been full of things outside of your normal routine as well. Loads of people stopped by to visit you and you and your mom has attended our National Child Trust (NCT) group's weekly meetings to catch up with our new friends who all recently had babies. Various trips to health clinics, midwifes and the hospital have confirmed that you are doing well and is generally very healthy. To top it all off you've had your first vaccination which should hopefully guard you against something nasty called TB!



NCT: Isabelle and Charly, Rachel and Kitty Bee.



And so after a month full of firsts (not forgetting your first bath!) we look forward to the month ahead. Registering your birth, getting a passport and a trip to Italy is all planned but who is to say what the month will hold. For now we are just celebrating the miracle that is Iolanda, and savour every minute that we spend with you!



In the living room on my play mat.



On the changing table, not my favourite place!



My first bath!





Out and about on the London buses.