and on the seventh day we rested

So in the end we went to Genoa. I was all for bagging the trip. Sometime around 3 am when I stumbled out of bed to get a wailing Livia I was about to tell Lorenzo that the whole thing was off, but I seem to have fallen back asleep before I got the words out. And then at 6:45 Giulio was up and in our bed, and then Livia started wailing from the next room (I had escorted her back around 5am) and then Lorenzo and Giulio started wrestling and giggling, which always drives me up the wall, especially first thing in the morning and suddenly a long sleep-in no longer seemed possible. So we were out the door by 8:30 (practically a record, we couldn't have been this fast if we had actually had a set time to meet someone,) and we were in Genoa a little after 11. It was a lovely day. Sunny and the wind that had been bearing down on the highway eased up once we got into the city. Genova is a long, narrow city that hugs the coastline, with tiny, pebbly beaches peeking out between the rocky coast, lapped by clear, blue-green water. There is also a long, paved walkway that goes along the coast, what Italians call a Lungomare and it was walking along there that we found a restaurant that had windows that looked out over the sea and it was here that we had lunch. Not that we were without annoyances. Giulio had refused breakast after dragging his dad out of bed this morning saying he was hungry. We had been on the road all of 15 minutes and there he was telling me he was hungry. "Now" I said to Lorenzo, "He will eat his cookies then demand juice which he will then manage to spill all over himself." Sure enough. "Mommy, I want juice." My job on car rides is to act as flight attendant, making sure that all people on board are watered and fed with a minimum ammount of disturbance to the pilot. It's a job that at times I think involves more effort than driving the whole distance myself; twisting my arm behind my head I pass snacks, juice boxes, precarious cups of water, wipes, and tissues to the back seat, as well as keep them on offer for the pilot. I mean Lorenzo. At any rate it shows how well I know my son, or at least how well I know three year olds, because a minute later I hear a wail of displeasure from Giulio, "Mommy, wet!" and there is pear juice down the front of his (thankfully) brown sweatshirt. Once we get to Genoa Lorenzo, against my wishes, offers Giulio the second stroller and suddenly the energetic little boy who could barely sit in his seat a moment before is suddenly unable to walk. I push him in his stroller, feeling like a bishop pushing a Borghese Pope up over curbs and down hills. In the stroller Giulio is completely calm and still, his regal gaze taking in the blue sea on our left. Finally my annoyance at pushing him along (he has been walking long distances without a stroller for months now, and believe me he needs to burn off some energy before we sit down to lunch,) gets the better of me and I ask Lorenzo to take over, preferring to push the one member of our family who is still too little to walk.
We get seated at the restaurant, that luckily is almost empty and then encounter a new crisis. We are in a restaurant whose speciality is fish, pasta, and pizza. Guess who only wants meat? The waiter stands patiently by the table as we try to trick Giulio into thinking that he really does want pasta but to no avail. "I want chicca," he says, using the dialect word for meat that he learned at school. There are moments when you get a glimpse of yourself, from before you had children, watching someone else's child, in this case refusing food in a restaurant. Mine will be different you told yourself as you knocked back your second glass of white wine and turned your attention back to the dessert list. And my son is here today to show me that mine are not different. Children are like dogs, how much they know you want them to eat something is relative to how likely they are to refuse it, and today Giulio is in top canine form, refusing a dish (pasta) that he normally eats without fail (and at school has seconds of) every day. I'm giving him the hairy eyeball when the waiter intervenes offering an olive branch in the from of prosciutto (ham). We gratefully accept.
We sit back to wait for our order when I realize that we have left Livia's baby food in the car. Lorenzo offers to walk the 10 minutes back to the car to get it, but that seems absurd when she can nurse right here. Except that we are in the middle of the restaurant and instead of concentrating on eating and therefore keeping everything decently covered, Livia keeps twisting her head to gaze around the restaurant. I try to keep her focused for a few minutes and then give up, I don't want to frighten the waiter. Men are all fine with exposed breasts when its for them but have a baby attached to one and they run a mile in embarrassment.
Lunch takes ages. It would be fine to go at a leisurely pace if it was just Lorenzo and myself talking about whatever it is people talk about when they find themselves at a restaurant without children, but after an hour we have only been served one course and the meal has become an exercise in tag teaming. Livia has decided that today will be the day that she too will be lively, defying her role as the Easy Going One, and is not content to sit in my lap or in her stroller. We eat in shifts. One eats with one child at the table, usually in our lap, while the other is outside letting the other child blow off steam. Shift changes are signaled by cell phone to announce that the next course has arrived, one of us wolfing it down so as to get back outside as quickly as possible, while the other is left gazing around the room at the other guests who are all in the midst of meanful (childless) conversations over mouthfuls of spaghetti alle vongole. Bringing children to restaurants is not taboo in Italy, but today we seem to have been the only ones to attempt this, though our fellow dinners barely give us a glance, unlike the death glares we probably would have gotten in the States. We finally get away after over two hours, Giulio collapsing in his stroller, his legs limp, tired after his lunchtime romp. We ask him 10 times if he needs to go to the bathroom before we leave and he refuses, waiting until we are halfway back to the car before announcing that he has to go. Livia, whose energy hasn't left her since we arrived in Genoa is asleep before we have gone a hundred yards.
We decided to drive further down the coast, to Nervi, which is just outside Genoa to take a walk to work off lunch and to get an ice cream. Here in Nervi it's hand to hand combat for a parking spot, but in the end, some distance from the shore, we find a spot. We are asked by three different passing cars if we are leaving even before we've had time to unfasten our seatbelts. This time I make Giulio walk, holding his hand and trying to distract him by pointing out passing buses as if they were something new and exotic. "Look!" I cry "A bus!" Giulio is not impressed. Our walk ends much the same way as our lunch, Giulio needing to be carried, claiming he is too tired and refusing all offers of the bathroom, though the gelato that we get is excellent.
We finally get home around 7. I know Sunday is supposed to be relaxing but I am exhausted. Tomorrow Giulio goes back to school, and he is asleep before I turn the light out, Livia goes a few minutes later. Peace finally prevails. Lorenzo and I are finally alone and we are too tired to talk, case in point, it's 10 and Lorenzo is asleep on the couch. Wonder why.