Busy Bee

Last week I officially went back to work. For now, and at least for six months, I will only be working three days a week to make the transition a bit easier. Also, mum and grand-mum are here, which makes leaving Emilia less painful! I have agreed to work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays however this Wednesday, today, Emilia's schedule was rather busy and I opted to work on Friday instead. When I told my boss that Emilia had a full day today he smiled, it's never too early to be a busy bee! 

The morning started with a lovely concert. Remember my posts (here and here) about the Bach to Baby concert last month? Well, we loved it so much that we had to go back! In January it was all about the piano, today Emilia experienced the sound of cello too. This time the whole family (well, Emilia, mummy, grandmum and great grandmum) went and our friends Steph and Juliette joined us too. Steph and baby came to our flat around 9.45am and then we all walked to Bermondsey street.

Like last time, the church was full of babies and parents. The youngest one was just eleven days! It was just lovely. I have taken some pictures and videos, of course. However, the light wasn't very good inside the church and the quality of the photos is therefore a bit poor.

Like last time, Emilia really enjoyed the concert but I think she is more into piano than cello. However, in all fairness, I had to feed her pretty much as soon as the concert started, which may have contributed to a little bit of crankiness when she heard the sound of the cello. But once her little stomach was full, she was all ready to listen and play! So who knows, she may want to be a cello player after all :)

Juliette, being Juliette, was super sweet and I love how the two interacted. Babies are so funny when they are together, they look at each other, they try to touch each other, they smile and "talk". They are clever things - more than we think!
And the adults loved it too. My mum and grand-mum had a wonderful time and kept thanking me for the experience.

Like last time the official photographer took some pictures too. I'll post them as soon as they are available.

As for the videos, here are a few that capture the beauty of the concert. 

The first video was taken during the Classical concert itself. Look at how interested in the music, as well as the other kids, is Emilia. Isn't she cute? 

At the end of the concert, the musicians take requests, Twinke Twinke is always a favourite song! I sing it to Emilia every night and she falls asleep with it, of course she liked it. 

And then all babies were invited on stage to sing along. Isn't it lovely?

And to end the morning in a super jolly way, we all sang Happy Birthday to a little girl named Lara who turned one today. What a nice way to celebrate a birthday!

All in all we had an amazing morning. We went back home around 1.00pm full of joy and happiness. And just an hour later we were out again. As I said, today was a hectic day for baby Emilia. At 2.20pm Emilia had her monthly check with the health visitor and I am happy to report that it's all going very well. She is now 7.780kg, between 75 and 91 percentile! Yes, she is a big baby. Well, she loves eating and thankfully she has been enjoying everything she has tried so far, although it's not much (only apple and pear). Tomorrow, we'll start with vegetable broth and baby rice. Watch this space!

Bach to Baby pics

As promised, here are the pictures taken by the official photographer at the Bach to baby concert. We appear in two pics.

In the first one is just me and Emilia; in the second one you can also see our friends Katharina with baby Elias and Katie with little Max. Look at how focused is Emilia! I am telling you, she loved the concert. Hopefully, we will finally have a piano player in the house! 

You can see more of the concert's pics here. 

Bach to Baby

This morning I took Emilia to her first concert and she loved it! A couple of weeks ago my friend Katharina asked me if we wanted to join her and baby Elias to a classical concert in Bermondsey street, just a few blocks from where we live. She gave me the details of the organisation, Bach to Baby, and I immediately checked their website and thought it was a wonderful idea. So this morning Katharina and I and another local mama, Katie, met downstairs at 9.30 and headed to St. Mary Magdalen church.

Bach to Baby is an innovative classical concert series for babies and their parents to enjoy together. Of course, with babies, you never know whether  they are going to behave or not but let me tell you you couldn't hear a fly this morning in the church. There were approximately 30-40 babies in the audience, ranging from the age of one month to two years, I'd say, and they were all hypnotised by the beauty of the piano! All the adults, mostly mums, grandmums and a couple of dads seemed to enjoy it too. I just loved looking at all these babies discovering the world and the magic of music. It was emotional, I must confess. I know already I will be one of those mums who cries at every big (or small!) event of their baby's life! 

I tried to take a video but it was not at all easy to do it while holding Emilia. So, apologies if you  don't actually see much of us...

P.S. A professional photographer took some nice pictures. I'll add them here as soon as she will send them to me.

Jubilee Weekend

It's a very long weekend here in the UK. Thanks to the Diamond Jubilee we have Monday and Tuesday off and the whole Country has been in celebratory mood since Friday evening. God save the queen! 

Last night Rob and I started the celebration with the Coldplay concert at Emirates stadium. We bought tickets a very long time ago, way before I got pregnant, and even if I was very excited to go, I was a bit concerned about the thousands of people walking to and from the stadium. Nevertheless, we decided to go. We saw on the Coldplay website that they would start playing at 8.45pm, so around 6.30 we left the flat and slowly made our way to Arsenal. 

Once we got there I spotted at least two or three other bumps and the girl queuing in front of us was pregnant too and due in just two weeks. Well, this is what I call a brave mother! She gave me the courage to go to the women's volleyball semifinals at the Olympics in mid August, for which we have tickets (I am due on August 29th...we will see...!). The concert was ok but definitely not Coldplay's best show; however we enjoyed it and I loved the glowing wristbands that they handed at the entrance. 

Today was the big Jubilee pageant, the highlight of the Jubilee festivities. A thousand of boats and vessels sailed through the Thames from Wandsworth Bridge to the Tower Bridge for the grand finale, right where we live. We hosted a little afternoon tea party with our friend Amy and her parents and I got very patriotic with the decoration of the table and the cake. 

We watched the whole parade on the telly for over three hours and from time to time we went out on the balcony to look around. 

Despite the horrible weather there were people celebrating out on the balconies and waving their flags. It was a great day to be in London, something to tell Baby O one day...