After a 80 minute flight on a 100% full British Airways flight, we have just arrived in London.
Julius had been very easy going all the way, up until the last 15 minutes in the car from Gatwick to our hotel (He was beyond tired and demanded that his window stays open, though it had started to pour again outside).
So far we are very impressed with our hotel. Sure, as one would expect from London, the room is on the small-ish side … but the amenities are high above average (more on that maybe at the end of the trip)
For dinner took the easiest option and walked to a close by Greek restaurant, which was surprisingly good, the atmosphere was nice and Julius fell asleep even before any food had arrived.
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He is not afraid of water at all and likes to lay down in the tub until his face is nearly all the way in …
… this is especially fun to do where all the foam is.
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I think he learned that in kindergarten, to do this fake smile when someone sticks a camera in his face … Will show you later what other funny camera behaviour he must have picked up there .. but I need 2 cameras to document this.
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But he was overall ok and in the end I finally got my good night kiss:
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Actually, the buttons on this pajama are designed to be easy for kids and Julius picked up on it right away, only the top button was to close to his chin, this is when he asked papa for help.
Sent out from Tokyo on 10/6, this PJ (and other goodies from grandma Keiko) finally arrived here on 11/23, but needed to be picked up at the post office and customs had to be paid. I kinda suspect that it had arrived much earlier, but I keep hearing horror stories about parcels stuck in customs here.
So, not only does it take incredibly long, but we had to pay 26.65€ on a package valued 66€ (2.50 – presented at customs, 3 – extra postal fee, 12% duty and 20% VAT) …
But the PJ is great (and big, will last for long winter months to come) and Julius was goofing around and I got a couple of fun shots (he is also parading my new hat around)
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He never introduced this lovely young lady to me … but apparently they moved in together … at the Brico Center (‘Homedepot’ / ‘Baumarkt’ style place where I had to find some curtain rod)
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The weather has been crappy all week and continues to do so over the weekend. But we had to go out at some point (The ride to and 45 minute fruitless wait at the post office does not count).
So, on with the rain gear and checking out the wet neighborhood.
Click on the above to access the gallery of all pictures taken (yes, I even uploaded the dark and / or blurry ones, because some of them are still pretty cool). No cropping, photoshopping, red-eye removal was done .. these are the photos as they were taken.
Please let me know if anyone has trouble with this new gallery feature (it is supposed to require a ‘modern’ browser, so, in case your Internet Exploder does not do the trick, it is time to give Firefox a try anyways)
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Besides bringing all his plush animals with him to bed, Julius has also decided that Stitch needs to wear a pajama.
And not any PJ, but the one and only Stitch pajama that Julius owns.
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| Really not much to say about these, other than he really enjoys his daily bath. |  |
His bedtime behavior is still changing like a leaf in the wind … while last night he went to bed without any complaints and fell asleep quite easily … tonight was the exact opposite … I mentioned bedtime early on, but when the time had come he started to revolt, put his shoes on (wrong sided) and tried to leave the apartment … ending up sitting by the door crying …
I let him cry for a few minutes and when I came back offering a hug, he was ready and came into my arms … and another 2 minutes later all was forgotten and he started to move all his big plush animals to the bedroom …
… and some songs and stories later, he was happily asleep.
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As reported earlier, Julius has started swim class this year and he seems to be enjoying it a lot, as he actually wakes up bright, early and without a fight when I remind him that today pescelino (little fish) day is.
I was a bit worried since he had been coughing on and off, so I thought I ask the school what their experience is, and after reconfirming with his teacher that his cough during the day is not that bad at all, and that the pool is heated, I let him go. But I also enquired where exactly the pool is and then headed off in trenchcoat, dark glasses and a hat. And this is what I found:
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It appears that 12mpx and 3x zoom are still not enough when you are like 20 – 30 meters away … but you can see it is him. And boy is he having a blast. I also took some video, but I think it is hard to see anything on that when converted to some online format.
| After 10-15 minutes, my son’s eagle eyes had spotted me and my cover was blown. So I left, to not further distract him from his water activities. |  |
His school is actually offering a judo class, but we declined this year .. but who knows, maybe next.
I just could not resist when I saw this little outfit, in his size and at an incredible price … and it will fit even better next year … but he already likes wearing it!
(But he was not willing to stand still for photos)
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Just like last year, they had this extended Sunday market in our neighborhood. They even brought back the exact same bouncy castle.
But somehow Julius was only interested for like 3 minutes … maybe it was the temperature (it was around freezing) .. thus we moved on to more weather appropriate things, like buying and eating (overpriced) roastet chestnuts.
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Late afternoon / early evening, Julius and I picked up Ritsu from some extra hours at the office and then drove to Decathlon, a big sporting goods store in Moncalieri.
I had been there before, i.e. to get all the stuff that Julius need for swim class (where else to get a swim cap?), but this was a first for Ritsu and Julius and the little man had a lot to explore.
There are several things I like about this place: The huge variety of stuff, the fact that of pretty much each item they have a cheapo version (which still looks like pretty decent quality) and that they actually have my size (What I usually by here in Italy labeled XL is never big enough)
We got some new shoes for Julius, but the goggles he had to leave behind.
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Thanks to our bad experiences with Poste Italiane, my mom was smart enough to give the parcel with Julius birthday presents to someone traveling to Italy and have it mailed from there …
But that was obviously not good enough .. we had already thought the package joins the growing list of other things we have lost in the mail. Seems that there was some error in the address and it was returned … and then sent out again .. and now after 2 months, it has finally arrived.
Julius loves those plushy hand puppets and I hope to use them for some serious role playing so that he gets some ideas about conversations better (i.e. when I give him a banana, he says “Thank you, papa”, I say “You are welcome” .. and he repeats “Welcome” … hmm )
Anyways .. we are just happy that those 5 new friends did not end up at some crooked postal workers collection of toys.
And a little video:
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Friend, ex-colleague and former neighbor Adwoa has returned from Ghana after over 3 months, only to finalize her move back to Africa.
Julius was immediately all over her (he keeps remembering her by pointing out her car, which we have been using since, and says ‘Adwoa’s car’) and it rained hugs and kisses.
I had made a lamb roast, cauliflower and oven potatoes, and we had a fun dining and catching up evening.
So sad that she is leaving us again soon, but we will hopefully visit her in Ghana some day.
.. and the amazingly extending hair …
Fun to compare those pics .. same outfit, 13 month between those photos.
This was on October 18th last year:
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| Yet another “look, Julius can eat!” picture series … but this time I love his silly posing. (And he really does eat carrots just like that) |  |
Since Ritsu is out on business I only had to cook for Julius tonight and I still had a very nice piece of salmon for him …
First I had cut one half into small pieces .. but he asked for more .. in the end he ate the whole grown-up sized piece of fish … plus some potatoes …
I wonder if he has a growth spurt again … he had an apple, a tangerine and a slice of bread before. (Note: no junk food as ‘snack’ in this house. When he gets hungry before dinner he asks for apple, banana or bread)
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When done right and with fun, Julius is even enjoying getting water over his head / in his face, which makes rinsing out shampoo fairly easy.
(I do recall that at age 7 or so I was still making a big fuzz about shampoo being rinsed out of my hair)
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(Click here for big version of the above picture)
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Lucca and his papa came to visit us in Turin, and besides terrorizing our favourite Asian restaurant (gladly we were the only guests that afternoon) we went up to the playground at Parco della Remembranza where the boys had a lot of fun.
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… and a new PJ
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