And now here it is, your moment of Zen

I felt a little guilty for letting Fede dress our defenseless son as a sweet pea and taking him out for the day. But 1) it was Halloween, and 2) she was having entirely too much fun to spoil the fun.

Sofia tried her first bit of an empanada the other day. A woman from Argentina makes them for a local cafe, and we can't get enough of them.

There haven't been many things that she wouldn't eat, so far. Her favorite foods are prosciutto (our's too), pasta, cheese and yogurt. On the more exotic side she has at least seemed to enjoy eating pickled ginger and lemon. She also loves the foam from morning lattes.

A morning out

Sofia enjoying some hot oatmeal, Tomassino enjoying a nap/cuddle.

Autumn Thoughts

There's no escaping the signs of the season. The ever-shortening days seem to alternate imperceptably from crisp to damp, and the trees only recently celebrated for their blasts of color seem to be surrendering their leaves en masse. Which is fine by me. Fall is a great time of year. When I was in school I used to look forward to the season that brought with it an October birthday, followed at neat intervals by Halloween, Thanksgiving and the start of the Christmas vacation. Autumn also signalled the end of the long, hot, languid Summers in Texas, and though I live in a more temperate region now I still welcome the cool respite. The English word Autumn comes to us by way of the Old French autompne (modern French automne) and on to the ancient Romans, and then at least as far back as the Etruscans. Autumnus was just one of the several guises assumed by the god of change, seasons and the maturation of plant life, Vertumnus (Etruscan Voltumna). Vertumnus was in love with the goddess of fruit, Pomona, but each time he approached her she ran away in fear. So Vertumnus cleverly assumed the form of an old woman and got close enough to Pomona to quietly approach and tell her the allegory of the elm and the grapevine. Without the grapevine the elm is just a tree and conversely the grapevine needs the tree for support. He then removed his disguise, and as he stood naked before her she realized at last that she needed him just as he needed her. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious that the god of seasons and the goddess of fruit would inevitably get together, but Ovid being the great story-teller that he was, he made it seem suspenseful to the end. Below, a pair of Autumns from Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The top one, painted in 1573, can be seen at the Louvre in Paris.

Tomassino: Love Instructor

When we first found out that we were going to have baby number two, among the many emotions that came in the first hours and days was a sneaking fear that we might not love him as much as we had our first child, Sofia. In retrospect, as ridiculous as this idea is on its face, how could we have known? We had a simple set of data from which we could extrapolate: one baby who we loved like mad, and one future baby growing furiously inside of Fede. If we were going to love him as much as Sofia, where would that additional love come from? If you are a parent of more than one child, you can stop smiling smugly to yourself at this naive question. Or maybe you remember wrestling a similar quandary. The issue is ultimately moot, because in the end the truth is simply that there is just more love to go around. Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that babies emit extremely potent Darwinian love rays, turning anyone within range into a snuggling, diaper-changing nurture-zombie. That's a pretty cool trick.

Life is good

Thomas has been sleeping for longer stretches of time at night, and as a result we're beginning to feel like ourselves again. He'll be three months old at the end of this month, and that's a milestone to be noted. With a bit more sleep and a bit less cranial fog, the strongest emotion we feel now is gratitude. For our precious little family, and our precious larger family. For friends, good health, and no wolves at the door. We are fortunate indeed to have these blessings...