My mother is always telling us that she heard somewhere that the sign of a good vacation is that you are ready to go home, and I am ready to go home...to see my husband, of course, and my dogs, and sleep in my bed. And this is good because Vinnie, Nora and I fly home tomorrow. So the rest of the stories will have to wait until I am back in Connecticut. It's funny, because after running all over Rome with the baby - eating in countless restaurants, visiting historic sites and pushing the stroller through mad, Roman traffic - I am so much less concerned about flying with an infant than I was before the ride over. In fact, I'm looking forward to it! There are changing tables in the bathroom, for one thing. After another improvised changing set up in a restaurant restroom this evening (which involved my sweater as a head prop on the floor), I am very enthusiastically awaiting the luxury of the airplane.

The thing is, of course, that I would have changed the baby on a million more floors in bathrooms the size of a postage stamp in order to go on this trip. What a wonderful trip to Rome. Yes, I am ready to go home, but that doesn't mean that I am not so sad to leave. I am already anticipating telling Nora, when she's older, about that time we went to Italy when she was just a baby. The trattoria where the wait staff held her for the entire meal. The church where she spent half an hour babbling happily while looking up at the expansive, ornately decorated ceiling. All the bread she threw on the floor. Perhaps another May, some years from now, we'll come back to show her exactly where it all happened.