Making a viking...!

Winter arrived to Pavia yesterday. Just like that! Until early evening there was a great autumn weather with 20 degrees and sunshine (and not even ONE mosquito around)…as it has been more or less for weeks now! As it was a holiday in Italy, my parents used the opportunity and went for a long walk in the Vernavola park in Pavia, much to my pleasure. Then came the evening and suddenly we had a strong wind blowing from the Siberian-plain (I think, or maybe it was blowing from Iceland)…! At least the temperature dropped dramatically in a short time and today is a fresh winter day. The weather is still beautiful -it’s even one of these days when you can see the Alps from Pavia- and my mum feels a bit like home! My parents just hope that it’s not going to be a typical Pavian winter, with fog and rain evey day. Especially not after I’m born, for my mum is planning to take me out for long walks in the equipment she and my dad just bought for me! Well, they actually bought me a trio (the one you can see on the picture), which is an all-in-one solution, a stroller, a car-seat (that can be attached to the frame and used as a stroller when I’m newborn, and it can even be used as a rocking-chair at home) and a carrycot (that can also be attached to the frame and used for transport while I'm tiny and as a crib for the first few weeks!). I don’t know if any of these items are going to be as comfortable as my current transport system, but at least I believe that I’ll be able to stretch a bit more than I can do now! My space has really started to be limited, and it happens that when I want to exercise, my kicks are so powerful that my mum can see her belly moving…! The other day I even lifted a heavy 400 page pregnancy-book that my mum was reading with my kick…!

Anyway, back to the long walks that my mum is planning to take me on after I’m born. Well, in Iceland, it’s a tradition to let the babies sleep outside from the time they are born, i.e. the babies are put in the carrier and left outside (on the balcony, in the garden or outside the front door if there are no other places available) where they sleep for an hour or so in the beginning, and then the time is gradually increased. It is not adviceble to sleep outsied if it’s more than -10°C cold, if there is a blowing wind and it’s snowing heavily, or if it is strikingly hot (in iceland THAT is rare), but in general this is the way icelandic babies pass their afternoons. My mum says that this is the way a viking is made! But here in Italy this is an unkown phenomenon (even my dad had never heard of such a thing and has a hard time believing it), and considering that the winters here are extremily humid, there is a lot more pollution compared to iceland, the summers are terribly hot, and baby-thefts occur once in a while, oh and not to mention the shocking effect it would have on people to know that my parents let me sleep outside –then my mum has abandoned the idea of letting me sleep outside –instead she is planning to take me out on long walks…! For she wants me to become at least a partial-viking if possible!

Knitting....

Vow, has there really passed so long time since my last blog? And how fast it has passed...!
I mainly blame my absence from the cyberworld on my mum who never finds time to write for me (it's difficult to manage a keyboard and, let's be honest, a computer, when you're still in your mum's womb!).
A part from still working as before, going swimming and walking with my dad and doing all the things that one has to do: cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, shopping..etc, the last month and a half my mum has filled her extra time with the good-housewife business of making sweaters for me. At the moment she is about to finish sweater number 6, and I must say that her production is worrying me quite a bit! And it's not because I don't like the idea of wearing home-made sweaters in this world of extreme focusing on designer-brands and fashion...!
The main reason is that my mum is improvising the knitting, the patterns, the style, and the size -with somewhat strange results at times!! One of the most peculiar things she has made is an acidgreen-fluorescentorange rice-grain-pattern sweater with accidental rugby-shoulders and a cap that would fit a monster-melone!! As regarding to the size of her products -either she is planning the way I'll be dressed for the next couple of years, or she hasn't got a clue as to which size I'll be once I'm out in the real world! The sweaters that she is making range from being so tiny that even my mum is thinking if she should buy me a small teddy-bear that could wear them, to being so big, that they might even fit my father!! There is absolutely no coherence, and I suspect that my mum suffers from an unknown geometrical syndrome that prohibits her from making things the correct size! I think it's time my mum finds herself a new hobby, something to take her mind of knitting before the disaster is complete! Maybe she should just start working on the editing of the 7 hours of videos that she took in Iceland last summer...now there is a job for the next few months for her!!!


Anyway, I'm 30 weeks old now, still growing (at an exponential rate if you ask my mum) and I'm pressing out my mum's belly as if it was made of elastic material. Soon there will be a new photo of her belly-balloon on this site.. but until then...have a great time

The keel...

As my mum's belly keeps growing, her centre of gravity is slowly moving to the belly! This is not yet a problem when she is walking (I say yet as it might get worse as me and the womb continue to grow), -but this change is particularly evident when my mum is swimming free-style in the pool. There the gravity sort of pulls her belly down, giving it a hanging shape (with the result that I feel that I'm floating in free air, which is fantastic). One might think that this causes resistance to her swimming so that she goes slower, or that her belly tends to pull her towards the bottom of the pool where she is forced to swim in apnea - causing the guards to throw themselves in the water trying to save her!!! But no such thing happens! In fact, after her last training in the pool, she was wondering if it was possible that the boat's keel was invented by a pregnant lady all those hundreds of years ago...!!! For, just as the keel gives the ship a greater directional control and stability in water, my mum's growing belly gives her stability and makes her resist to side rocking -she simply swims better! This sensation, added to the weightlessness that one feels in water, makes swimming extremely pleasant for my mum who, mind you, never really liked swimming free-style -but now she's enjoying it a lot!

Maybe my mum could become rich designing swimming costumes (for non-pregnant women), with a hydrodynamic keel* in the belly region!!!

*Orders will be taken on www.keelcostumes.it
once the patent has been obtained and the idea
sold to a big swimsuit-producer