The weather is very fall-like and Fiji born Julius adapts just fine. Today was a pretty mellow day as tomorrow is some holiday and so everyone (including the kindergarten) is taking a bridge day and besides shopping @ PAM we went to the playground for entertainment. Still not sure what times the real action is going on there .. but once again it was pretty empty. But Julius had a blast ..
Warning about the video .. very hard core, 3:18 minutes .. all baby stuff, not too exciting … just cute … but hey, he is getting better at that slide thing 
Julius and I have taken a liking to do fairly early morning walks on weekends … we are so used to catching the bus around 8, so we now just go and check out the fog situation around the bridge at the river, look at ducks, count leaves and explore pine tree cones.
We were invited to a Halloween party today, and it was a lot of fun. Anna’s younger kid Robin is going to join Julius’s school soon and this is how we met. And we were discussing Halloween parties over the last few days and voila, Anna threw one. Sarah, Jan and Sebastian (in a very cool Tigger costume) came too. Most other kids were a bit older. Actually, Julius was the youngest. But we all had a lot of fun, Anna and Peter’s place has some great out door yard.
We took plenty of pictures and for the first time I am trying to use flickr.com to host the pictures … please let me know if there are any problems … for the pics, CLICK HERE.
There is also this fun videoclip that Ritsu took of me fighting Tigger (aka Sebastian)
Thanks to the wonders of modern keitai technology, my brother Tim passed on this picture to me (and since my phone sucks I had to pick it up from vodafone’s website). Look what street they found
We went again over the river to Catullo and on the way we spent some time at a very empty playground (they actually have quite some of them around here) and Julius had fun trying to walk up the slide there.
Food was great again, seafood salad ischitani (lots of octopus, but heavenly evil dressing), pasta with porcini mushrooms for Ritsu and I had a really great filet steak, topped with one huge porcini!
Julius behaved fairly well, he gobbled up a lot of the brocolli we brought for him and later even more from mama’s pasta.
Julius is getting more comfortable at the playground every day … the slide can still scare him, but he is getting more and more fun out of it.
His second Halloween, last year he was a scary DJ and there was no party to go to, but this year, we are ready.
I checked one of the big ‘Wal Mart’ like supermarkets, and they indeed had a Halloween section (mind you, Halloween is just getting popular in Europe) but only really silly costumes and nothing in Julius’s size … next I tried Iper Bimbo, and they did not even had any Halloween merchandize …
Gladly Sarah had kept one of Sebastian’s old costumes, and now Julius is ready to go out as a cute little bumble bee!
On our way back today, again we had extra time to hang out at the playground, and Julius was very curious what that was in that bag, so we tried on the costume right there!
When I picked up Julius from kindergarten today, Sarah gave us a ride again to Piazza Zara, and somehow Julius knows that there is a playground … and since the weather was great and Sarah just saved us about an hour of busriding time, we went, and he had so much fun …
I also have a miniscule video clip from when I picked him up at the kindergarten … first kindergarten video footage … the white stuff around his nose is Nivea cream … since he somehow got all red after drinking pear juice (which is strange since he has been eating pear at home for days now, without any reaction)
Notice his reaction when he actually sees me It is different every time … like yesterday, he kinda ignored me … like saying ‘I still want to play’
Looks like he is getting better, he went to kindergarten today and had a fun time. He was actually not at all impressed when I showed up to pick him up … looked like he wanted to play some more. But he did that then back at home. He found me gear bag and started going through it like Yoda does in Empire Strikes Back … too funny … he found a little neon yellow lock and that made him happy for hours …
The other application that was revealed with the new iMac G5 on 10/12 is Front Row, a very cool approach to using a remote control with your computer … instead of creating a remote with 40 + buttons, apple uses a 6 button remote and a great user interface (reminds me of my old TiVo).
While so far only offered with the new iMac G5, just like Photo Booth, Front Row found its way into the wild, as you can read here and here.
It is great to get through your photos and play slideshows. I do expect apple to release an official version soon, as soon as they have sold enough iMacs, since this app actually makes more sense on a mac mini (connected to a projector). And why the heck is the remote control still using the old IR system? Why not BT? Maybe battery life? But one can also use a BT enabled mobile phone (which I don’t have anymore, thanks to some criminal ass back in Fiji)
Actually, he is getting better: Yesterday the fever came only back in the evening and not as high as before and today he took a fairly long mid day nap, was very fuzzy once he woke up (see below) and while he had no fever at all today, his stuffed nose made him pretty unhappy.
Later I tried diluted apple juice on him (since he kinda rejected water and only wants milk) but the juice mix seems to be a big hit with him. Need to make sure he stays well hydrated.
Friday night Julius surprised us with a fever. Of course we were frantic and wondered if that is a result from his earlier vaccination, but according to all literature and the doctor, a slight fever might occur 7 – 12 days after the vaccination, but not 24 h later. So, general panic, observing the temperature, giving him paracetamol (which worked great) and overall he never looked too sick, just bothered by the temperature.
Saturday was not much better, but we got some good times out of him as well (usually 45 minutes after he got his medication) and we managed to keep our lunch date with Sarah, Sebastian and Gert-Jan, also parents / student of the Il Cucciolo kindergarten / pre-school. And Julius had a fun time watching the fish tank with Sebastian (who is 2 years older than him)
Saturday night was pretty bad and of course we thought again about going to the hospital but he responded very well to the medication and pleasent surprise, come Sunday morning, when usually the medication wears off, he was without fever …
It came back after noon, but very light and we still took him out for a walk, which he enjoyed a lot, until his patience level was reached and he got in tantrum mode.
Among all the fun stuff that apple has released in the last 2 weeks (new iMac, new video iPods and so on) they also came up with a new application called Photo Booth, which is actually a fairly simple ‘point and click’ app for the iSight camera connected to your computer … but it is done the apple way .. very intuitive, very simple and easy to use .. snap a pic and drag it to either email or iChat, no need to remember the file name and search for it all over your hard drive, add some fun filters … fun for all .. check out what fun we had this morning:
Since there was no photo yesterday, how about a new video clip? This was taken a few evenings ago .. and no, it is not a disastrous as the title may imply. Julius is just really very much into opening things these days … oh, and he had just learnt the word ‘moon’ that evening and kept using it for everything.
Thanks to Mr. Rice for the nice background music
Today was a long day for Julius: After I picked him up from kindergarten, we went to pick up his MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine and then we headed on a long bus ride to see the doctor.
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Long story short: Julius was very brave (He even got a sticker from the doctor confirming that) He turned the waiting children at the doctors place immediately into his audience and tried to grab attention. Although everything was in Italian, I managed to get along fairly well with the doctor. Julius was very upset about the brief checkup the doctor gave … but once he was in my arms, he was fine again. The funniest moment was probably the actual needle prick … he was not afraid … and like 2 seconds after the needle was injected he turned around and started whining in a way as if to say ‘What the F… , what did you do that for???’ … but he did not throw a total tantrum and very quickly he was ok again … |
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So, all his vaccinations are done, now let’s see what the next reason will be to bring him to the doctor.
While there was a great opportunity for a picture (Julius bending forward, crying his eyes out, while the doctor is checking his heartbeat), I thought it would have been unfair towards the doctor to do that picture So, no pictures, sorry.
Not only is he sleeping crosswise … he also keeps his feet out dangling through the bars.
This is just so Italian: One of the first things that our dear 1 year old son is learning in kindergarten is the miracle of making wine!
2 weeks ago the kids were involved in the kindgarten’s organic grape picking and smashing them in a barrel. the only photo I have seen of that including Julius has him comfortably traveling on his teacher’s arms.
So, and 2 weeks later all parents are invited to check out the final product and listen to grape / wine / autumn related songs done by the kids (which was hillarious, Julius’ group, which are the 1 and 2 year olds, I only spotted one kid actually mimicking what the teachers were doing … the 3 year olds did a song and dance in a circle … which was very cute … but 2 of the resident dogs were getting at each other right in the middle, which was just hillarious !!! ) … I kept saying ‘wow, this is the scariest halloween party ever’ .. but it was actually very nice. We got to talk to other parents (there was one dad who kept talking to his daughter in Italian, French and English, so, we are not alone) and enjoyed some nice food. And it was a great occasion for Ritsu to see our son in his daily environment.
(click to enlarge)
Among the food items offered were roasted chestnuts which were very nice. All in all the party delivered a great autumn-y feel. And I am not surprised at all that Julius’s first kindergarten art is wine related:
Today the hotel’s cleaning crew exchanged our kitchen / dining chairs from some very fragile design-y looking contraptions to these more solid red plastic chairs. And guess who had a great time playing around with them, sitting there like a big boy and trying to get down / get up again and again?
The last few mornings it has been very foggy, no wonder with the river that close by. But it was also foggy in our apartment, since we had tried our new humidifier for the first time.
Anyways, after putting the laundry in the machine, I grabbed Julius to see what is going on and we ended up playing with duckies, dogs, looking at joggers and a bunch of fishermen. We even saw the occasional kayak floating by …
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