ROME!!!

Alas, we’ve been home from our vacation for a week now. With the trip behind us, we both suddenly realized how little time we have left before the baby comes, and that we need to get moving on prep stuff!

But back to Rome. Ah, Rome! It was a lot of fun. It was also hot, and a lot of walking. We both got plenty of exercise as we wandered the streets. Everything’s very compact, but you still have to go quite a ways to connect the dots. I likened it to Vegas--if you’ve ever walked any distance on the Las Vegas strip, you may have told yourself that your destination isn’t very far away (oh, that’s only two hotels away!) but the massive size of the resorts on the strip means that walking two hotels is the equivalent of 4-6 city blocks. Rome felt like that.

This photo of me with my belly protruding is in front of the House of the Vestal Virgins in the Foro Romano (the Roman Forum--basically the government district for ancient Rome.) The vestal virgins served an important purpose in the cult of Vesta (goddess of the hearth): they had to keep the communal fire going no matter what. They would serve for 30 years--10 to learn, 10 to practice, and 10 to teach the next generation. They were also given great privileges in a society where women didn’t have many. However, if they failed to remain virgins they could be buried alive.

This is inside the Colosseum. There’s only a small portion of seats remaining, which you can see between us. You can see the remains of lots of corridors that would’ve been below the floor for use in transporting gladiators and animals, or to flood the arena for naval battles. They’ve reconstructed part of the floor, so you can see the level that would’ve been at. Behind Dean on the first level is where the emperor would’ve sat, and behind me is where the senate would sit. The large entrance between us on the floor level was the winner’s arch, where the gladiators would make their entrances and those who survived would exit. There’s another arch underneath where we took this photo that was the loser’s arch, through which they would remove the bodies. It’s hard to imagine this place completely filled with seats. Hardly any of the arches would’ve been visible from the inside.

It was neat that so many famous sights were visible from the patios of restaurants all over the city.

Unfortunately you can’t see the dome in this first photo--we couldn’t really get far enough back to really get a good shot of it. This is the Pantheon, and it has the largest dome ever built before the development of reinforced concrete. They say it looks really neat inside while it’s raining, and you can watch the water pour in the hole in the middle. It didn’t really rain while we were there, though. The Pantheon survived and is in such good shape b/c it was converted into a Catholic church. The artist Raphael is buried here. We didn’t get many good photos from the inside, b/c tripods seem to be illegal in Rome. Most of the sights we went into told us we couldn’t use tripods, (they even made us check it at the coat check at St. Peter’s!) which was very annoying. It’s nearly impossible to get a good photo of the inside of a church when the lighting is too dim to work without a flash but the things you want to get a photo of are too far away to be lit up by a flash (or they’re telling you you can’t use a flash either.) Dean couldn’t get as steady of shots as he wanted on the video camera either.

This photo is of me in front of the Madonna del Parto (Madonna of Childbirth) in the church Sant’Agostino. The image is considered the protector of women in labor and is revered by expectant mothers. Going to some of these sights was very moving.

This is St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in the world and the center of Catholicism in Vatican City. We tried to see the pope, but he wasn’t here. Ppbth! We’d heard that he would celebrate a public mass every Wednesday at 10:30, and the tour book said it was free but that you needed tickets b/c of space availability. We tried to see if our resort could fax a request for us but they had trouble with that. One person there also told us she thought the pope was out of town. We weren’t able to get to the Vatican before Wednesday, but we did get online and looked at the Vatican’s website, where we thought it said the pope WOULD celebrate mass on the 13th. So we got up early and managed to get there around 10:00, but when we got to an information point and asked if we could still see the pope, the woman told us that he was at his summer home in northern Italy. That was disappointing.

The church, however, was quite amazing. Nearly every surface was covered with artwork. As an American, I’m used to churches with one altar, but St. Peter’s had numerous side chapels all over the place. I still don’t know what they would all be used for. We spent some money in order to climb up to the top of the cupola (550+ steps.) Boy, was that a workout! Once you got up into the dome, the walls curved inward so you had to lean over as you climbed. The view from the top was spectacular, though. We learned that St. Peter’s is, by law, the tallest building in Rome, which meant that no other buildings could crowd the view. This photo is on the roof about halfway up. If you zoom in, you can see a crowd of people hanging over a railing at the top of the dome.

This picture is of Michelangelo’s Pieta. It’s the only work that he ever signed, b/c when it was unveiled he was only 24 and people didn’t believe so young an artist could’ve created it. We saw the Sistine Chapel, too, which was in the adjoining Vatican museum. The image on the Sistine Chapel is actually copyrighted by Kodak! Kodak made a deal with the pope some years ago that they would clean the ceiling if they would be granted the copyright until 2020. (It was in dire need of cleaning b/c for the first 400 years of its existence it was lit by tallow candles, which left cooking grease all over the ceiling.) We also went into the crypt, where we saw the final resting place of Pope John Paul II and the tomb of St. Peter (the first pope) which the high altar was built directly above.

This is Dean and I taking a bath. Well, we were in the Terme di Caracalla, anyway--the most luxurious of the imperial baths. I was actually surprised that they let us walk into this room, b/c the tile is still on the floor. The complex was huge, and I kept trying to picture a modern health club here. Except with everybody naked.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. This was us eating our final gelato as we waited for the shuttle to take us back to the resort on our last full day there. The gelato (ice cream) was amazing--the fruit flavors tasted like they were made with fresh fruit (which I’m sure they were) and the more traditional flavors were incredibly rich. Yummy!

Zaxxon came in handy a few times, at least when it came to getting seats on buses and trains. The baby didn’t move much the first few days and I think I threw off it’s schedule by going 8 hours away. But by the end of the trip (just in time to go home and throw off its schedule again) it was moving around a lot. There was one evening we found a toy store in the Piazza Navona that was closed, and were thinking about coming back the next day to buy something for Zaxxon from Rome. Then Zaxxon started kicking, so I knew the baby wanted us to come back!

Nursery Furniture

We've been busy during June and July working on some furniture for the baby's room. Dean and I each had old dressers (that had once belonged to our dads) which we decided to restain so they'd look nice and kind of match the crib. (We only need one now, but I figured it was easier to do both of them now so we don't have to bother when kid #2 comes around.) And while we were at it, we decided to make the changing table we bought match, too, since it had a whitish paint on it which was rubbing off in places.

My parents came over twice and Dean's parents once to help us strip, sand, and stain the darn things. It turned out to be a lot more work than I'd anticipated, particularly since it took us a while to get the hang of the stripper so we had to redo almost everything after the first try. The fastest part was the sanding, when we had several people and four power sanders going at once.

The first coat of the stain went pretty quickly too, although I have to offer a word of advice: never, EVER buy a 2 in 1 stain and polyurethane. You think you're skipping a step, but you're really just buying a product that doesn't work as well. Any product that gets less even the more brush strokes you apply is a waste of money b/c you can't go back and correct mistakes. I was honestly a bit upset after seeing the first coat on the changing table (that was the hardest, since it had some many small pieces and angles.) I thought of all the time and energy we'd put into prep work and was so disappointed with the result. I didn't want all that effort to have been a waste! Well, thankfully the second coat evened it out quite a bit, and so you can't really tell that it's uneven in places unless you get up close (and who's going to do that to a changing table?) And it definately looks better than before.

Everything sat in the garage for a few weeks (while my poor car was subject to the elements in the driveway) so the smell would go away, and then we had to dust everything off when we brought it inside. But now we're closer to having the nursery furnished!

This will be the last blog entry before our vacation. Dean and I strike out for Rome on Friday morning! Whoo hoo! For once in our lives, we managed to get a lot of packing done early, so we're feeling pretty prepared (although there's still a fair bit to do before we go.) Once we get back, we'll post some pictures of the three of us (hee hee) at various locations in Rome. See you all on the flip side!

Belly Bump

It's been a while since I posted belly pictures, so here are some new ones. The first photo here is the last one I posted, from April 27. The second is from this last Sunday, July 27. As you can see, my belly is quite a bit bigger now. It seems to me that it really just started ballooning in the last few weeks. It's started getting in my way, too, when it comes to bending over. The upside is that I now look pregnant enough to get special treatment from people--doors opened, chairs offered, etc. The only shorts and pants I can fit into now are maternity or elastic/drawstring, and I've also started wearing maternity tops--not so much for girth since my shirts are stretchy, but for length.

Meet Zaxxon!

Here, at long last, are the ultrasound photos!

We'd tried to hook the video camera up directly to their machine, but that didn't work so we just taped the screen. The only video clip we've included is the heartbeat. This is basically a cross section of the baby's chest, and you can see the four chambers of the heart as they beat. Pretty cool. The rest of the video changed views a lot and kept freezing b/c the technician kept measuring things, so it didn't really make for a good continuous video.

This first photo is of the baby in profile, and the second it has its arm up, and looks like it's sucking its thumb.





























These three are the 3-D images of the baby's face. Pretty darn cool!

In this last photo, you can see a foot.


We declined to find out the gender, and she was very cautious so we wouldn't see anything, and told us when to pause it and look away while she checked out the legs and nether regions. We even think, after watching it played back, that she alternated between saying "he" and "she" a few times, so she was trying not to give any clues.

Isn't Zaxxon neat?!!

The Quickening and other news

Here's a new vocabulary word for those who don't know it: the quickening. It refers to when a woman first feels her baby move. For me, it was actually the day of the ultrasound, while I was lying in bed that night. I wasn't sure at first, since it was just a gurgle or flutter and could've been gas, but when it kept happening over the next few days, I became sure. I'd probably been feeling it move for a week or two prior to that, but just didn't recognize it. Since that time, the baby has started moving quite a bit. I don't just feel it at night anymore, but also many other times when I stop moving: at my desk at work, on the couch while watching TV, etc. Occassionally even when I'm moving around. It's sometimes strong enough that Dean has been able to feel it, too. Zaxxon is on the move!

We began our first registry this past weekend. We'll post links once they're complete. So far we only made it through a fraction of Babies R Us before we had to take off and go to a friend's baby shower. We've got multiples of certain items until we decide which we actually want, so we've really only just begun.

We realize we still need to get ultrasound pics up. That should happen very soon.

Going to our friend's baby shower made me realize that we should probably get plans in motion for ours. I have some ideas, but I guess it's time to start putting things together.

In other news, Dean and I will be going to Rome in August. We discovered that we needed to use some hotel points this year and decided to take advantage of that to go somewhere exotic and different as a "babymoon." Should be fun!

Oh, and I was hoping that people would comment more on this blog, so if you have something to say, please share! Just remember to identify yourself in your comment.