Baby Steps

Merry Christmas!

Well, with all that’s going on in life right now and us thousands of miles from home, who could have ever guessed that we would have had one of the best Christmas’ ever? Certainly not us.

But, thanks to a few little baby steps, Melissa and I got the best Christmas present ever this year: Ella’s first steps.

Of course when I stay first steps, I don’t mean a few little ones. Ella went from no steps to walking a city block. She literally took about 12 steps before falling. The way I see it, it’s the baby equivalent of going 0 to 60 in under 3 seconds. We’ve known that she’s been close for the past week or so. She’d stand on her own or would walk beside us with only the aid of a finger or maybe even a pant hem, but she still hadn’t taken the plunge. Dad had dangled everything imaginable out in front of her with the hopes of enticing her to those first steps. From eyeglasses to glasses of wine; from new toys to sharp knives – we’d tried everything. Turns out that the one thing that compelled my daughter to walk was seeing other kids having fun on another piece of playground equipment. Apparently she just didn’t want to be the only kid not having any fun, so she just locked eyes on them and took off.

But the story doesn’t end there. Lets just say that of all the times to be testing out the video feature on my digital camera, I picked the right time. Yep, you guessed it – I accidentally caught my daughter’s first steps – ON VIDEO! Talk about good timing. Now everyone back home will be able to enjoy those first moments with us. I’m trying to find a way to post the video to YouTube to put it here on the blog, but the filters here at work aren’t cooperating (since, of course, we still don’t have the internet from home.)

I think concentrating on something in the distance (other than her two feet right in front of her) really did the trick with the walking. In the time since then, we’ve not been able to recreate the incident, but we’re actually okay with that. Now that we’ve attained the ceremonial first steps, we’re glad to put off the sheer chaos that will ensue when she finally masters her new skill. I actually put dad on retainer while he was here with specific orders to sweep her legs (Karate Kid style) every time she starts to try again. It was ugly.

So all in all, Christmas was great. Ella got way more gifts than a one year-old needs, but it was fun just the same. The long visit with dad was nice too. I don’t think I realized it until he left, but it was probably the longest consecutive amount of time I’d spent with him since I moved out of the house 11 years ago. It’s a wonder we didn’t kill each other. Actually, its more a wonder dad didn’t kill one of the Italian drivers we shared the road with so many times…I still have a rotting orange in my console dad swore he was going to use as ammunition for “the next guy who does that…’

In even more recent news, we got a phone today! That’s right ladies and gents – we’re one step closer to being in constant touch with everyone again. We’ve been able to talk to people on our cell phones using calling cards, but the very best rate would only get us 26 minutes for $20. Now that we’ve got a land line, it’s immensely cheaper: the $20 phone card now gets us almost 3 hours of talk time. We hope to work a deal soon that will get us access to a 1-800 number which will make it free for people to call us here, but, big surprise: it might take some time. By then, we’ll probably just get Vonage over the internet and have a local phone in Tennessee.

So, I’m about to break every rule in the world and post my telephone number on the internet, with the prayer that it doesn’t somehow haunt me. +39 081-804-3491. Everyone please call us!

Melissa tells me that when she asked the telephone man about us getting DSL, he said he would “turn it on” tomorrow. Some of you may be doubters, but with the promise of a shady phone company man driving a beat up red Fiat to switch some magic switch “first thing in the morning,” how could I go wrong?

Needless to say, I’m not expecting fast internet anytime soon. But we’re taking baby steps – sometimes even literally.

pac