Well, we are back from our Black Sea vacation. All in all, it was a lovely time. The water was pretty cold but Io and I went swimming anyway. One thing that's cool about the Black Sea is that the water stays shallow for a long way. In LA, if you go 20 feet out from shore you're probably in 8 or 10 feet of water. In Constanta, you can go 30 feet out or more and be in water that is still only waist-deep. 
There's not really a lot to say about our time at the Black Sea. It was really just a series of days hanging out on the beach and evenings...hanging out on the beach, with several good and simple meals in between. I read an entire book (I bet you all miss those monthly book reports! Right? Yeah, I didn't think so), swam, and got quite a bit of sun. Gabe was colicky off and on but it wasn't the end of the world, and we figured out that the sound of the waves soothes him, just like the train noise did and the vacuum and hair dryer do at home.
We also strolled around the boardwalk a lot, trying various street foods and looking at shops. Ioana loves these fried anchovies in garlic sauce that you can only get here, so there was a lot of that going on. From my point of view feeding someone garlic and anchovies is practically a Geneva Convention violation, but Io was happy. I found a place selling sassy donuts, so I was happy too.
When I wasn't looking, Tania bought Gabe this I <3 Crips do-rag
"187, bitches!"
One thing we did do in Constanta was ride the cable-car that goes over the town. Apparently this is a pretty big deal -- part of the reason Gagi wanted to vacation in Constanta was to try the cable-cars, I'm t0ld -- but to me it was a bit under-whelming. You get nice views of the beach and stuff, but it's basically just a slow, short trip from one end of town to the other. It doesn't even loop-the-loop or anything.
And other than that, just a lot of hanging by the beach. The wedding that Tania and Gagi were there for was one of the nights, so they went to that. Io and I dropped by the reception to show the baby to people, but otherwise had nothing to do with the wedding.
On our last day, though, we went out to the wedding people's house to pick up some stuff Gagi and Tania had loaned them, which turned into a three-hour dinner party. I was struck again by the depth of superstitious belief here in Romania. The mother of the bride is a woman named Veronica. She's a professor of mathematics and, by chance, has blue eyes. In Romania it's believed that folks with light-colored eyes can easily give people the Evil Eye, even if they don't mean to. It's sort of like being Cyclops from X-Men.
Veronica
So we get to Veronica's house, which was awesome because they had a new litter of kittens. I hadn't taken my camera with me, because we were just supposed to be swinging out there to pick up some stuff. The normal rule on this blog is that that means I have to put up pictures of kittens, but if I replace missing pictures of kittens with other pictures of kittens the universe might fold in on itself. We've already got the Large Hadron Collider nearby, I don't think we need to be taking any chances. I'll just put some unrelated beach photos.
Anyway, so we get to Veronica's place, and soon after we arrive Gabe gets colicky. Veronica -- the math professor, remember -- decides that it must be because she gave him the Evil Eye, as if she were Sauron or something. So she's all apologetic for having cursed my son and asks if she can please please try to calm him down. I'm like, "Sure, that's fine, but understand that he's colicky and is going to cry for a while."
Whoa. Cosmic.
So Veronica picks him up and tries all the normal stuff, carrying him, rocking him, singing to him, putting on her ruby sunglasses, etc. As usual, he keeps crying. So then Veronica decides to pull out the heavy artillery, and tells Io to go get the bottle of holy water that she just has sitting around the house. She makes a cross of holy water on Gabe's forehead, but of course he keeps crying like he's on fire. I'm standing there going "Wow, it's like this holy water doesn't even work!" which probably wasn't super-helpful, but I had fun. He eventually calmed down on his own.
WTF
We later discovered that the roof of the house had a veranda with a porch swing, which put Gabe right to sleep. So we spent pretty much the whole night up there chatting by ourselves and occasionally with some ten-year-old named Vali who would come up to join us. He was very impressed that I lived in Los Angeles and wanted to know if I had ever been to Hollywood and if I had seen Pirates of the Caribbean. "The movie, or the ride?" I asked, and his eyes got big: "There's a ride?"
That's right, kid. America has it all.
W A R N I N G * * * W A R N I N G * * * W A R N I N G
If you do not have kids or are grossed out by baby stuff, you should just skip to the cute baby picture at the end. I am looking at you, Jason Quirino.
So one thing we learned this week is that at around two months, babies' digestive systems kick into high gear efficiency. They go from pooping 2-3 times a day to pooping maybe once a week, and this change happens basically overnight. This happened for Gabe right as we started our trip, so we spent several days worried about why he's not pooping and doing all this internet research about baby poop every time we went to the restaurant that had wifi (appetizing!). But luckily it turns out this is totally normal. We also discovered, without the need for any internet research, that when a baby in this phase finally does poop it's like "CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR!" Yikes.
And now we're back home, which is lovely. It's nice having the internet all the time again (oh how I missed you, my sweet internet), and our bed is better than the hotel bed. Io has more nursing exams this week and then this weekend it's off to the village for Gabe's baptism. Whee!
Moment of Zen:
PS: Hey guys, try putting "Veronica" into Google image search all by itself, without "comics" or anything near it. Aw yeah.
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