pictures from venice: gus, rich and sophie

i am so proud of myself--i shot over 1100 pictures during our two weeks in venice! unfortunately, that means i have 1100 pictures to go through and edit--or not. here are images of gus, sophie and rich in venice--i am also going to put some others here and on argusgallery.com (eventually) that are just of venice. enjoy!

this is the most ideal sight for any parent travelling on a plane with a small child


gus and rich on the water taxi to the apartment


gus and rich


sophie blowing a raspberry at her mommy


sophie loves her daddy


gus on his favorite bridge in venice (notice it does not have any banisters)


really bad picture of me, gus and sophie on a vaporetto


unbreakable rule number one for travelling in italy with small children: let the kiddos feed the pigeons, no matter how grossed out you are by the concept


sophie trying to run the pigeons over with her most detested stroller


sophie making peace with the birds


"what is down there?"


gus gazing longingly at a gondola


gus feeding the pigeons


gus freeing the pigeon that he caught


gus half-wrestling, half-feeding the pigeons


sophie enjoying a box of apricot juice


giovanni e carolina


gus about to get in really big trouble at i frari


san marco and the doge's palace from the vaporetto


sleeping sophie with sleeping gondolier


gus feeding the pigeons


gus still feeding the pigeons; sophie has lost interest


gus and sophie near piazza san marco


gus on his favorite bridge, again


rich and sophie


gus counting steps


gus on his other favorite bridge in torcello (also, no banisters--these are the only two in the lagoon without them!)


basilica santa maria assunta at torcello--and there is a great new york times article about torcello here.


gus, sophie and rich in the belltower at torcello


gus' island--this is where gus said he is going to live when he grows up


gus found a throne and kindly invited his sister to join him


danger girl climbs and climbs and climbs...


sophie takes a break


unbreakable rule number two for travelling in italy with small children: keep the kiddos stuffed full of gelato


yum


safety gus is thinking, "i'm not sure if you can drink that sophie, but you go ahead and try while i watch."


beautiful floors at santa maria e san donato on murano


happy, happy girl


gus, rich and sophie in campo santa sofia


gus on the traghetto


sophie on traghetto santa sofia


traghetto driver with a penchant for pens


resting sophie


sophie did miss a few sites along the way (note the bridge of sighs is in the background)


gus and pigeons


this pigeon did break the skin, and i started wiping down gus with clorox wipes after each feeding


i could get so used to buying fresh fruits and vegetables every day if i was buying them in this type of setting...


gus riding the train to ravenna (he took to train travel beautifully)


gus outside of san vitale in ravenna--it was pouring there when we got off the train


augustus finds his namesake outside of san apollinare en classe


gus doing his best to freak out italian drivers with his ninja-sword master impression


gus inside of san apollinare nuovo


this is the crypt of gus' favorite church in ravenna, san francesco. if you look closely...


...you can see there are many live fish living in the flooded crypt


gus writing in his journal on the train back from ravenna


sophie on top of san marco


checking out the people on piazza san marco


little feet


gus and rich in the campanile


close-up of gus and rich


sophie and santa claus (st. nicholas)


sophie having so much fun on top of san marco


gus and sophie feeding the pigeons (notice how rich has just shaken off two pigeon riders from his back--that freaked him out for the rest of the day)


gus feeding the pigeons


gus hanging on yet another fence


rich and sophie


rich, sophie and gus on the piazza in front of san zanipolo, after getting thoroughly chewed out by a priest inside the church who didn't think sophie was being respectful enough for the place. he got even more pissed after i told him i thought children's laughter was the voice of god (in my best italian, no less!). oh well.


gus sulking after we told him we weren't going to rent a gondola on this trip


he was only partially appeased by ice cream (sophie was thrilled)


gus hit his apex of italian cool in padua


gus and sophie on the train back from padua (sophie took to train travel beautifully as well)


gus being gus with a giant punching ball on a back street of venice


gus feeding the pigeons


rich telling the pigeons (that he is remarkably afraid of) to part in his presence. it didn't happen.


sophie, being sophie, and getting really filthy.


gus, being gus


"¿que es eso?" (sophie's first encounter with nuns)



***(this is where things go downhill rather quickly)***

gus being forced into the hardest labor of his life, trying to get to the vaporetto stop


at the vaporetto stop; rich attempting to smile. we caught the later boat and then we missed our flight, which led to the discovery of unbreakable rule number three for travelling in italy with small children: DO NOT MISS YOUR FLIGHT.


gus, on our extra day of venetian vacation, at the airport

this is the rich we all got to spend 24 stressful hours with (fortunately, there is no picture of me as i look at least as bad)


and this is the sophie we got to spend 24 more hours with on the flights back home. that extra day kinda killed us!

silly movies

i pilfered rich's computer, which uses a different operating system than mine, and i am going to try and upload some videos. please let me know if you have any trouble hearing or seeing them. the video quality is going to be really poor because i had to compress the bejesus out of them to get them to load, so sorry about that.

the first is rich and sophie doing the cliffhanger with a combo twist:




the second is sophie and gus dancing, without music, along the riva degli schiavoni in venice to the amusement of many (notice how rich is trying to get as far away from us as he can):



if this works, i have more...

we have returned from the wilds...

guess where we went?

...of italy! we were in venice for almost two weeks (rich left us for a few days to go to slovenia) and are now trying to adjust to being back. we are all a bit jet-lagged still and waking at 4:00 in the morning, but we should be back to normal in a few more days. i have a ridiculous number of photos from the trip that i am still trying to get through, but for now please enjoy this image signore gus in his way-cool milan inter jersey. buongiorno!

i need a break!

i am taking a much-needed break. i will return, and hopefully i will have something interesting to write about. until then, please enjoy this image of la serenissima. bye!

cliffhanger with a combo twist

the combo twist can be quite harrowing

sophie is our sensory-seeking child. gus is and always has been "safety gus;" sophie is most definitely "danger girl." rich and sophie have developed this game of cliffhanger, where sophie stands on rich's chest while he is standing, rich holds her hands and then lets her freefall onto her feet. i cringe every time i see it. now he does cliffhanger with a combo twist (or spin--we haven't finalized the title yet): he does the drop then a bounce into a 360 one way, then a 360 the opposite way. i have a video of this that is hilarious; i'm going to put it on argusgallery.com if i can't figure out how to load it here. enjoy, and when i post that sophie has broken her ankles, you'll know why...

cliffhanger!

ready for twist/spin

action shot!

action shot!

and it's all over

sophie loves her daddy, especially when he's inducing dizziness

where to find U.S. sourced petroleum

i'm learning about gas!

okay, this is a fairly old idea--buy gas from distributors who sell primarily domestic product and we can help speed up the end of the war. but, that isn't really how things panned out and the war seems based on myriad other factors now that buying U.S. sourced gasoline can't change much. however if you are still interested, here is the link to which companies derive what percentage of their product from the persian gulf:

department of energy site

retailers such as citgo (venezuelan owned) are at zero percent because they import most, if not all, of their product from venezuela; surprisingly, canada sells us the most foriegn-pumped raw product. does this mean that if you fill up at exxon/mobil 28% of the gasoline that goes in your tank will be from the persian gulf? no...as petroleum is petroleum is petroleum and it all gets refined together and sent out to retailers as a giant melange of foriegn and domestic sourced product. so you really don't know exactly where the gas comes from when it goes into your car; you can only know that said company bought x amount of raw product from y region in any given year.

and that is our petrochemical lesson for the day, people.

"my room stinks."

"mom, my room stinks."
"no it doesn't."
"moooooom, my room stinks. it really does."
"gus, you are in a time out and you're not getting out early. just sit in there."
(distant gagging, wretching noises.)
"mom, i am serious. IT STINKS."
"you're fine."
"MOM! I THINK THE EXTERMINATOR SPILLED HIS POISON IN MY ROOM! THAT'S WHY IT STINKS!!"

okay, he's got my attention now. the bug man was here earlier to nuke a mass of something called "swarming ants" (which i mistakenly thought were termites and was thrilled to have an ant infestation in its stead). i'm not a big fan of insecticides or toxic chemicals in the home, but there were hundreds of these things swarming on the window next to my computer and it was giving me nightmares. they had to die.

i go into gus' room and he's in there, under the sheets, breathing through his pillow. it smells god-awful.
"okay, your time out is over."
"all my plastic stuff stinks."
"like what?"
"this--" and he opens up a clear-plastic container of seven years' worth of cheap, brightly-colored plastic toys that smells like ass. literally. i slammed the lid shut so fast that i didn't have a chance to notice that right on top of the toys was a cheap, brightly-colored plastic cup of sophie's that has been missing for months. of course, it had been filled with milk at one time and she threw it in there straw-side down so all of it leaked into the box. then she shut it. and there it stayed until today.

however now all of it will reside in the bernalillo county dump.

the family in happier, less malodorous times

i think sophie may be trying...

...to kill me, yet again. she has been cutting her first molars, all 4 at once, for the past month. she has taken to screaming almost non-stop during her waking hours, not wanting to nap, and wanting to get up at about 5:00 or 5:30 every morning. i am beat. i am exhausted. i look like shit. and i am about to kill rich for being able to sleep through sophie's screams AND get away from all this for 12 hours a day...lucky bastard. gus can sleep through everything too, but that is a good thing.

to give an indication of what i have been like, gus named is remote control t-rex, which roars and snorts and stomps on things, missy:

meet missy.

how embarassing.

i'm down with OPMD yeah you know me

there is a great article in the new york times today about OPMD, ocularpharyngeal muscular dystrophy, which is one of rich's areas of concentration both in research and in practice. he has a paper in review for the ophthalmic plastic and reconstructive surgery [journal] on the clinical treatment of such (from the ptosis side). he has a great love of this subject (he's been thinking about it since 1995, when he first started coming across patients here in new mexico) and was super duper psyched to see something on it in the NYX....take a look here!

iohwans (mostly)

mckenzie, anela and paul

thinking about our friends in phoenix today, and their lives as crispy little strips of bacon--a month's worth of days over 110 degrees so far! yikes. it's actually raining here at the moment, which is always a lovely event in the desert. happy labor day weekend everyone!