A beautiful September day

We have reached Italy yesterday morning, after a tiring - but less than I expected - journey. unfortunately we again failed to get the bassinet to use in flight, so Rajiv had to sit or sleep on my lap for most of the time. It seems there were again more infants than available bassinets on the plane. I bet this won't happen traveling to Canada: the advantages of low reproduction rates...

My home town welcomed us with a fantastic weather, nice temperature not too hot but pleasantly warm and blue sky with white clouds here and there. The air was clear - and dry! I almost forgot how that feels - and you could see the mountains far away.

My mom picked us up at the airport (with support from a second car to carry the luggage) and we had some sandwiches with her at home before she had to return to work. Unfortunately she is experiencing an unexpected work overload and won't be able to take time off work to spend with us, but she is very happy to see Rajiv again and said she will come to see him every evening after work.

Then we saw briefly my aunt, while Rajiv was asleep, and we waited for him to wake up to go and spend some time outside and enjoy the weather. We took him for a short visit to his great -grandmother (bisnonna Lina) and after that we went to pick up Rajiv's new passport, that we had applied for before leaving to India. It is hilarious: eyes - brown - height -50 cm... By the way, he is much taller now already!

We walked around for some time and went to a bookstore that I hadn't yet visited since it was restructured last year. We got a popular science book on neuroscience by a Kerala guy who apparently is very well known - I suspect this must be the understatement of the century -
and a nice little book for Rajiv about a baby elephant that takes a bath at night and then goes nicely to sleep. Hope he will find it inspiring.

We came back home by bus and Rajiv by now was very cranky for some reason, probably a wet diaper. The people on the bus made every sort of nasty comments about how I wasn't taking care of the little one properly until I found it necessary to inform them that in spite of appearances I am actually Italian and I did understand what they were saying. I hate this kind of things, it almost ruined my day.

We reached home after six. Before dinner my aunt came to see Rajiv awake and bring us some icecream and then my mom came as well, on her way home from work. I am very happy to see that they are bonding nicely with the little one. Some time later my dad came to see us as well. He didn't get to see Rajiv awake, but that will be remedied soon. He commented on how much bigger he looks now and we had a nice chat anyway, in which my husband could finally demonstrate some of his knowledge of the Italian language. By the time he left it was quite late and we were ready to collapse in our beds.

Today looks like another very pleasant day outside and I hope to take Rajiv out for a walk later, maybe in one of the new wraps instead of the usual carrier. Maybe we will also take the stroller one of these days and see if now that he is a big boy he can sit and look around instead on lying down in the pram - which he hates and wouldn't do anyway.