yuki

It was a fairly quiet one this year. Yuki was a spider girl this year and she went trick or treating with her day care class. We only got a very few trick-or-treaters coming to our house too.

After a week of meeting (and excellent food at night!) we finally had a day to be tourists in Milan. We took the tram and subway to get to the Duomo (cathedral), walked up to the roof of the Duomo, and walked around the area. Italians love their bambini: random hands would come out to pinch Yuki's cheeks. This felt a bit disconcerting at first, coming from the U.S. where people are very careful about personal space (babies belong to the parents' space) but I think it's nice that people feel babies are everyone's responsibility.


The roof of the Duomo is spectacular. It had been raining all week and we got lucky this day with the sun. It was warm and we could see all of Milan from up there. The building is so amazing. Each of the craftsman must have taken such pride in creating each little sculpture, figure and statue. We had decided not to take a stroller specifically so that we could come up here and it was definitely worth it. Yuki was comfortably asleep in the Ergo carrier (which we recommend highly by the way. Hurray for hip-belt!), and we got a spectacular view without having to futz with a stroller.



After the Duomo we went to get some pizza walked around toward the Brera neighborhood where we saw very fashionable baby clothing stores, maternity clothes, furniture, pubs and cafes, tarot card readers... We had some gelato (of course!) and then it was time to go home for Yuki. Well maybe more for us. What a beautiful day! We took the metro back again. Yuki was very active when we got back to the hotel after being asleep in the carrier all day all about Milan.

We went to Milan with Yuki for a collaboration meeting for a week. Yuki did great on the way over and here are photos of the view outside and inside the plane. We drove to Chicago, flew to Frankfurt, and flew into Linate Airport in Milan. Yuki slept most of the way, and also played with two other kids in our row on the way to Frankfurt. United gave us a bassinet that clips to the front but I've seen better ones. This one was too small and too low on the ground. Yuki didn't seem to mind the long trip too much having this enormous bed to herself, at least until we went to sleep. :) We are thinking we may be able to sell the bed photo for a hotel ad?

Autumn is finally approaching in Madison and is it possible she's getting ready by drinking as if she is going into hibernation? The squirrels outside are certainly getting chubby :) Here she is completely asleep after a nice walk in the crisp air outside.

The way she plays with toys is ever evolving. She is very cuddly these days.

Ok, I have to admit now: we have been trying to capture her sneezing ever since she was born. We finally did it! And we did not resort to using any form of artificial induction :)

Yuki makes up for patting Mr. Penguin's face all day by giving him a kiss and a hug. I think he appreciates the gesture. I think you will likely see more movies from now on on this blog. She is starting to move around and do things and I think you'll get a better sense of what she's up to that way.

Yuki's head is more steady and we've decided to have a go with her big-girl stroller seat. She did great! The seat has three reclining positions and we tried them all. It's also getting a little cooler outside. Being a child of parents who met in Seattle, of course she needs a fleece coat.

We went to the Henry Vilas Zoo today. It is quite a nice zoo, and it's free! I think it's one of the very few (maybe only?) full fledged zoos that are free. They don't even have a box that says "suggested donations". Yuki made friends with yet another giraffe (see entries from Oct 6 and July 17 for giraffe #1 and 2). Never mind that she slept the entire time we were there. While you're there, we highly recommend the Zuzu Cafe just outside the zoo entrance.

There are several things that these images show: Yuki can bring her hands together, she can hold things with both her hands quite firmly, she likes to chew on her friend, Sophie the Giraffe, and starting to outgrow her bassinet. She examines one hand with the other, brings up toys (and our fingers, handkerchieves, etc.) to her mouth, pets her friend Mr. Penguin who is always next to her in the bassinet (see this post ), holds onto my hair, her shirt, etc. etc. It's really amazing how all babies learn this stuff pretty much in same sequence at similar times (of course Yuki is way ahead of the curve :) Sorry for the sideways movie. I haven't figured out how to rotate movies yet.

Yuki is going over Papa's lecture notes for today. He's supposed to talk about Fourier Analysis of sound and she doesn't think that the students will find his explanation of decomposition of a function in terms of a sum of sine waves very clear. Here she is telling him he missed a minus sign.