Leo’s first run

Today we run to support the research against the breast cancer.

And for those who may wonder why Mathilde is not in the pictures, she has been running the whole race, while Matteo and Leonardo were lazily strolling behind the lines…

(Tonight I’ll be leaving to Pakistan. See you in a week or so. Bye).

Colours

Leo and his new friends

From DC, Parma, and - recently - from Tunis, we are getting news that Leo just had (or will soon have) new friends.

Congratulations to Renato & Carito, Agnes & Xavier, Annesophie & Mathieu*, and looking forward to meeting Leo’s new friends soon!

(*) Sorry, we don't have a post with Annesophie and Mathieu yet...

Scialla!

It is true, the birth of a child totally changes the lenses through which you look at the world…

A couple of days ago we watched Scialla (Roman slang expression that means ‘don’t worry’, ‘stay cool’), an Italian movie that tells the story of Luca, a rebellious 15 year-old boy that lives with his single-mother and reluctantly attends the high school. Suddenly, Luca’s mother has to leave to Africa for a few months. She thus decides to give the custody of Luca to Luca’s private classes teacher, a former professor with whom Luca gets along, disclosing him that he is Luca’s natural father - but asking him to keep the secret. A forced cohabitation thus begins, during which, against their will and through a series of events and adventures, Luca has to confront himself with an adult male character, and the father has to take care of his son…

The movie is cute, and under normal circumstances we would have enjoyed it and gone to bed happy and relaxed.

However, a profound sense of anxiety pervaded us instead. We projected ourselves in 15 years and saw Leo in Luca: I was frightened by the challenges and the responsibility of dealing with a rebellious teenager. Mathilde was frightened by the idea of not understanding Leo’s Roman slang!

Smurf* or Blue Helmet?

(*) Puffo, Schtroumpf

Più veloci della luce! (Faster than light!)

We thought we had already seen Leo happy. But we hadn’t seen him yet on a child’ seat on a bike.

He was literally bubbling with joy!  What bliss…

Trust is...

... to throw yourself into the unknown trusting there are two hands ready to catch you...

At the park with Valentine and Annick

Tutti gattonando appassionatamente (Crawling altogether passionately)

In the past days we received the pleasant visit of Muriel, Julien, and the little Valentine.

Crawling altogether passionately…

Geology classes

Oceanography classes

Botany classes

Davidino’s day-care teacher maintains that - in the presence of their children - parents should call a spade a spade. So if they are pointing at a tree, they should not call it ‘a tree’, but ‘oak’ if it is an oak, ‘fir’ if it is a fir, ‘willow’ if it is a willow, and so on.

The same rule applies to anything else. 

And so, Leo, this is a leucanthemum maximum, this is an opuntia ficus-indica (watch out, it stings…)

Little Leo grows...

Cheerful, lively, smiling… but certainly not at the forefront as far as the psycho-motory skills are concerned.

And so tonight, when - during our dinner with Muriel, Julien, and Valentine - we saw Leo crawling on the floor for the first time, as if he had been crawling forever, we could not hold a tear of emotion…

Il Mammone

If Leo wants to play, to fight on the big bed, be tickled, be lifted or thrown in the air, then it’s dad.

But if he wants to be cuddled, then there is no sweeter hug, no softer shoulder to lean on than mummy’s…

… mammone! (mummy’s boy, fils à maman!)

Hollande ou Sarkozy?

Palazzo Farnese, French Embassy in Rome. Mathilde fulfilling her civil duties.

Hollande or Sarkozy? Tomorrow the arduous virdict...

In Anzio with friends

Marco, Marieclaire, Simone, and Leo...

I Promessi Sposi ? (The Betrothed ?)

Duccio, Riccardo, Andrea, Lorenzo, Lucien, Guilleume, Arthur, Tiago…

It seems almost an epidemic, but most of our friends had a baby-boy in the past year.

Probably good to set a football team, but for us, foreseeing parents, quite a problem: will Leo ever manage to find a wife? With such a shortage of baby-girls, and such a plentitude of baby-boys, the competition will be fierce in 20-25 years, we thought.

So, better to plan ahead.

We have never been particularly in favour of arranged marriages, but we never thought we would have found ourselves in our present situation. And so we started our quest…

The first baby-girl we considered was Aude, who you have already met some posts ago when Laura came to wean us as far as babies are concerned. 

Arranged marriage or not, we consider ourselves a rather open-minded couple, and we thus decided to have the betrothed meeting before taking any decision. The meeting went pretty well: they played together, it seemed they liked each other… in sum, all seemed to go pretty smoothly. But when the time of the bath came, the problems started. With hindsight we have to admit we have perhaps rushed a bit too much. Anyway, we decided to have Leo and Aude having the bath together. 

We should have never done that: Leo, usually a rather peaceful character, literally got crazy. He started screaming, spraying Aude with water… he did not want to share the bathtub with anyone.

Embarrassed, we bowed down in profuse excuses. But it was too late: the damage had already been done. Laura and Benoit, the parents, immediately accepted our excuses. But Aude’ feelings had been hurt forever, and we doubt she will ever want to see Leo again.

And now, will we ever find a spouse to Leo? The prospect of having Leo at home living on our shoulders forever is suddenly becoming more and more real…

Leo learns to roar

Al concerto del 1 maggio

The 1st May Concert in front of San Giovanni Cathedral on the occasion of the Labour Day - an happening where dozens of Italian artists play for an entire day in front of hundreds of thousands of people from all around Italy - may perhaps not be Woodstock, but still remains an event to be seen.

We were there… J

At the fuel station

The soldier, the donkey, the child. And Afghanistan on the background…

Leaving Afghanistan

Yes, this place is a mess. But can’t deny I remain fascinated by it every time I visit it. Even better: every time I return, I discover something new or get to know something better that makes me appreciate more and more this country and its peoples.

During this trip, I appreciated the Afghan warmth, and, at the same time, their polite restrained style. I enjoyed their lavish (almost overwhelming) hospitality. Discovered that behind their beards and fierce aspect, a strong sense of humour hides. And even got an Afghan name…

And while leaving to the airport, I discover myself already thinking, perhaps unconsciously, to the next time I’ll be back…

Find the intruder

(From now onwards) Call me Zilmay

In zoology, camouflage is a method of defense that allows otherwise visible animals to remain unnoticed to their predators by blending with the surrounding environment. Camouflage is obtained not by achieving actual invisibility, but by not being noticed.

A particular form of camouflage is mimesis (or masquerade), in which the animal does not hide itself, but resembles to something else of no special interest to the predator, thus not being noticed.

Simple but effective, this is the form of defense I was advised to adopt by my counterparts in Nangarhar. As my North Face shirt made me too easy to spot, I was offered a typical Afghan outfit.

And to make my mimesis into an Afghan complete, I was given an Afghan name: Zilmay, young.

Matteo goes to Afghanistan

Not even last week's Taliban attack (the so called Spring Offensive, or Spring Campaign - almost a ritual by now) could stop our hero.

Matteo is leaving tonight to Afghanistan to bring the Afghan rural poor out of poverty.

It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it…

(See you on May 1st. Bye for now...)

Au revoir, Macha

Merci d’être venue à nous voir, et à bien tôt…

The perfect workplace

Imagine the perfect workplace: five minutes walking distance from home, an amazing cafeteria with a breathtaking view on the Circo Massimo, the Palatine Hill, and the Caracalla Thermae, and - since we are at it - your child’s nursery just across the street… 

No, this is not an imaginary place: this place exists, it is FAO. And well, this is going to be Mathilde’s workplace from now on. After almost six intense years with Conservation International, Mathilde in fact moved to FAO, and today it was her first day of work. 

Congratulations to Mathilde to have succeeded in being recruited in an organization where it is almost impossible for a European to be recruited. But - we all know it by now - for Mathilde ‘impossible is nothing’… 

(Ps: a marginal note to this. When two years ago we chose Rome over Fiji and Johannesburg, our idea was to stay here for three-four years before moving overseas again. Now, with both having a job in Rome, chi ci schioda più da qui*???) 

(*) Who will get us away from here? Qui nous reste cloué d’ici?

In the club (of those who made it)

Under a torrential (and freezing) rain, on roads that looked like mountain streams in flood, and puddles as big as lakes, I run today my first (and as of today last) marathon, in Milan. Probably not the ideal day for my baptism in this discipline, but, with hindsight, I can say that the fury of the elements made this race epic.

And as the epic poems, I could write pages and pages on today's adventure.

But my first words are words of thanks instead. When I first started preparing for the marathon, an experienced marathon runner told me ‘Mindful: preparing a marathon does certainly require a lot of commitment on your side, but it requires even more commitment from the people that surround you, and that do not necessarily share or understand your motivation’.

True, and for this reason I would like to thank Mathilde for having presented me with the time for training.

Thanks Mathilde, when I faced ‘the wall’, the stretch between the 30th and the 35th kilometer, I thought that if I had given up, I would have wasted your present. And I clenched my teeth and continued...

(And now, what will the next challenge be?)

Orecchiette alle cime di rapa

We could not conclude the reportage of our trip to Salento without a food-related post.

Not ‘orecchiette ai broccoli’, as I erroneously referred to in one of my past posts, but ‘orecchiette alle cime di rapa’ (turnip tops orecchiette) is the local speciality.

Does this picture need any further comment?

Mathilde’s bundle

To be fair, I have to say that Mathilde carries her share as well. Sometimes…

Matteo & Leo a Porto Selvaggio