I came across these family photos tonight as I was scrolling through my folders. With Gianni’s second birthday sneaking up on us, I thought I’d share our first family vacation.
In late October 2008, when Gianni was five weeks old, we took a trip to Tuscany. I wanted to squeeze in one last trip before I returned to the office the following week.
Easier said than done. Don’t be fooled by the romantic idea of taking a weekend trip to Tuscany with your Italian husband and five-week old son. It was a disaster–which these pictures don’t nearly explain.
As you know, Gianni was a screamer, and didn’t sleep. I don’t know what we were thinking when we booked three nights at a very nice hotel in downtown Sienna. Gaetano and I literally thought we would be evicted from the hotel since we surely kept the entire third floor awake during that lovely vacation.
Things didn’t get much better during the day…he still screamed, but we trudged on. You see, at this point (five weeks into motherhood) I still didn’t know that we had a very particular child. I thought all babies were like Gianni. I knew that other people travelled with babies, so I wanted to! Again, I wasn’t aware that not all babies screamed for 20 hours a day, and it would have been completely understandable to hull up inside the house and lock the doors for six more weeks.
Nonetheless, here we were. I can almost hear the shrieks coming from the stroller….
I had to have a glass of wine to take the edge off…nevermind the multi-tasking.
Not even daddy could calm him down…
Putting on a happy face…I’m sure tears were welling up in my eyes at this point.
Shouldn’t these vivid memories be fading by now? As Gaetano likes to say, “We were traumatized.”
