The Asciuttis Cinema

I'll finish the series of posts devoted to our trip to Italy with some funny pictures. 

This year for Christmas my dad bought a new tv. It's a very nice and quite big tv for Italian standards. Among several features, it also has the option to watch movies in 3D, and on December 26th the Asciuttis ended the Christmas festivities gathering all together to watch *The Avengers*, not really a holiday movie but certainly full of special effects! I can't say we all loved the movie but we definitely enjoyed wearing the 3D glasses. My grandmum fell asleep five minutes after the movie started, my mum lost interest ten minutes later and I gave up after fifteen minutes; dad and aunt Marilena were a bit stronger and kept watching it while chatting. The only two who got really attracted by the movie were Rob (who had already watched the movie at the cinema when it came out!) and Bea. In the end, it was a fun way to close the festivities and now I love looking at these funny pictures of us all together. 

Baby O in 4D

This morning Rob and I visited the Baby Scan Clinic on Harley Street for our 4D scan. We had been looking forward to this since the moment we made an appointment a couple of months ago. We knew it would be very exciting to see Baby O again, and this time in 4D, and we were also aware of the fact that perhaps it could turn out to be a bit freaky too. 4D baby scans are very similar to 3D scans except that they are video scans, not static pictures like the 3D scans. As a souvenir we got ten 3D images of the baby and a DVD that captures all the nice moments of Baby O yawning, smiling, opening and closing her mouth, kicking, moving, and blowing kisses (at least, that's what it seemed she was doing!). By the way, they also confirmed Baby O is a girl! At some point Rob and I saw *something* that looked very suspicious but the technician understood straight away and was quick to assure us that that was a foot (!), and she showed us all the girlie bits instead. Phew! I was already thinking what to do with all the clothes that we have bought and received...

The pictures are not amazing, to be honest, but I have scanned a few for you to see anyway. Who do you think she looks like?

The whole time we were *filming* her she was moving so much showing us her chubby legs and froggy feet. It was very cute to see her in action. It would have been a magnificent experience if it wasn't for the fact that her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck and she clearly didn't seem to like it. She tried hard to get that thing off her neck (she is a trouper!) but she was only able to lift it a bit, up to her nose. Rob and I got a bit stressed by this but the sonogram technician assured us that this is quite common and since the baby moves a lot it is more than possible that by now she is totally free already. In any case, I am going to inform my midwives about this to see if we can have another scan to keep things under control. It was incredible to see how both Rob and I reacted the same way, with a very strong parental instinct: we both wanted to do something to take the umbilical cord off our sweet baby but of course we didn't know what to do, so we just kept asking questions. This is just the beginning, one of the many concerns that attack a parent's life! I wonder: are we ready for it? :)