Imagination

Suddenly, all of the little stuffed and plastic animals are HUNGRY! Luckily Liam is here to help them eat.

Also, the baby is learning how to walk. It is impossibly funny to see her wobble and fall down.

And speaking of rip-roaring comedy, "On Top of Spaghetti" is a major hit around her. Liam will add a charming sneezing counterpoint, too.

Jeremy is on his way to Nashville. Eeeek! Pretty exciting--

I have to give up on keeping track of all of Liam's words, but I have noticed a cool rhyming pattern. He seems more likely to remember and re-use words if they rhyme-- or almost rhyme-- with words he already knows. Like: Tummy, Honey, Bunny. When Liam hands me a book to read he says "Das hier", which actually could still be the English "that here", but in a toddler accent...

Dance!

And I forgot the cutest word-- dance! Usually said double, as in "dance! dance!"

I took Liam to see an informal showing at school a couple of weeks ago where he sat perfectly still on my lap while people were dancing-- of course, it was a showing, so there was a lot of talking in between pieces. But since I talked to him beforehand about not talking during a DANCE performance and we are going to see people DANCING and Dance Dance Dance, he managed to pick up the word.

We do have evidence of his amazing new dance! dance! moves, but, unfortunately for you, he was stark naked. And playing his keyboard. To funk. We'll see if we can get a movable fig leaf going...

The phrase "come on" popped up this weekend. And when Liam says it, it just sounds so cute, mostly because he seems to be saying it to himself with such joy. Come on!

Liam loves walking. This definitely works best if you don't actually have to go anywhere because there are basement grates, puddles, stoops, and every single store window to explore.

But sometimes you have to stop for a cup of milk foam (just to let the baby take a rest).

New words:

Camel

Tummy

Aufräumen (clean-up)

Anziehen (put on-- like shoes)

Igel (hedgehog)

The German is catching up!

It's hard to really keep track now because he repeats EVERYTHING. I'm trying to note the words that he uses independently.

Squirrel Sweater, Kale kills House, and Liam animation

The sweater that I began in November for Liam (it was such a warm fall! I forgot winter was coming!) was finally finished last week! Luckily it just turned cold here...

without

and with pants.

Then the kale decided to destroy the gingerbread house.

And Liam fended off his dinosaur.

Maybe a bit of a rough week---

Gluttony under the Tuscan Sun

After we had had our fill of Rome, we hopped on the fast train to Florence. Upon arrival, we stowed our bags, and headed to forage for lunch. We had a highly recommended panini place on the agenda, but due to various map difficulties, we ended up winging it again, and again found a gem. The owner was a jolly fellow (in the Santa Claus sense), and the food was delicious.

We got some bruschetta for an appetizer:

In the above picture, I am just finishing saying the name of the topping: lardo!

I had the spiced beef with olives, which was sublime, and Sarah had the salt cod.

Liam was being his usual charming self, and the owner dramatically sliced him a hunk of cheese that lasted the rest of the day.

You may have noticed that I haven't said much about dinner. This is due to the incompatibility of a certain somebody's bedtime with going out for dinner. Here is an exceptional evening in, enjoyed with ravioli stuffed with walnut and truffle paste, and octopus and potato (seems to be a typical dish in Florence). I guess the waitress thought I was going to eat all of it myself, because she only gave me one set of silverware. Luckily we thought Liam wouldn't mind if we used his stuff.

Day two in Florence was steak day, and what a steak it was:

That's a little more than a kilo of perfectly rare T-bone, and things got a little crazy:

I don't recall eating anything else the rest of that day. So it was on to a couple of small but interesting Tuscan towns, on the way to Pisa. After getting completely turned around and disoriented, and walking across the entire town of Pisa, we stumbled into this unassuming pizzeria. Again, gold! I had a pizza with artichoke, ham etc... Sarah and Liam had the carmelle filled with ricotta and spinach, with some beans and potatoes. They somehow don't look like much, but they were really perfectly prepared.

Oh, yeah, and hot!

Well, that took a while to write.

Here is a bonus Liam video:

When in Rome, eat as a Roman emperor would have

So now begins the daunting task of blogging our recent adventure to Italy. I am starting arbitrarily with the culinary aspect of the trip, just because that is what I am in the mood to do.

Here is our little guy, enjoying his last taste of Germany in the airport. Mmmm butterbrezel...

On the first day, we journeyed to the Testaccio district, in part to visit the market, where we could get some of the ingredients for our evening dinners. If anyone can identify these crazy crustaceans you win a prize! I was happy that we could pick up some real buffalo mozzarella, though the tomatoes did not seem to be at their best (duh, it's even winter in Italy).

The other reason we ended up in this somewhat obscure district, was to visit this restaurant:

Which dates to the late 1800s when this was a slaughterhouse district, and bears some of the authentic Roman cuisine from that time. For example, this head cheese appetizer:

For my main dish, I had the classic pajata rigatoni. For those of our readers who are the sensitive type, I would recommend not clicking the link. On reading the description, even I had some stirrings of regret. But it was frickin' delicious.

Even Liam's dish was amazing. I think I could be happy for the rest of my (consequently short) life just eating this simple pasta with butter and parmesan.

The next day we ventured to the more pedestrian tourist area of Rome, past the Coliseum, down to Trajan's forum (more on that in a later post, suffice to say I took more pictures than reasonable of his triumphal column, probably because I am too influenced by Mike Duncan's podcast).

Anyway, we planned on lunching at a place called Enoteca Provinzia Romana, whose hook was providing food gathered from the local province of Rome (for locavores, see). I had the anchovy torte (foreground), while Sarah braved the porchetta. Both were delicious, and Liam picked a winner again with his mortadella bruschetta (i.e., open face bologna sandwich)

We indulged in desert (in large part because it was raining, hoping we could ride it out). Chocolate Mousse with persimmon sauce:

Then, it was Christmas Day, so we headed down to the Jewish quarter for lunch. We went to Nonna Bete (recommended by Anthony Bourdain!) We had the sampler for appetizers, which included the Jewish style artichoke, fried salt cod, stuffed zucchini flower, rice balls and cheese. All of which I would recommend but the rice balls were amazingly good.

For the main dish, Sarah had the vegetable lasagna, Liam had the gnocchi, and I had ravioli with orange sauce. I won this one.

The next day we had a crazy adventure. One sight I wouldn't recommend seeing in Rome is the Polyclinic. 'nuff said. After passing by the Spanish Steps, we headed to lunch (without a plan). We were basically in tourist trap central, but I think we did pretty well considering. It somehow had a Viennese/German theme, and was decorated like a German brauhaus. We had the option for schnitzel and "german" beer (Becks), but instead had Calzone type things, and a very decent Italian beer on tap. Mine was a classic Calzone, sausage, tomato sauce cheese, arugala. Sarah's was filled with zucchini flours and cheese. This stuff was so good, I am suspicious about the "theme" menu.

Right next door was a chocolate/ice cream shop, with a line out the door of people speaking Italian, so we thought we should check it out.

Liam approved!

That about did it for Rome, now on to Tuscany!