I Want To Be In That Number

This depiction of Gabriel is pretty much
how Gabe already imagines himself

It's a big day: on the Romanian Orthodox calendar, today is the day commemorating the archangels Michael and Gabriel.  That means today is King Gabe's "saint day," which is like an extra mini-birthday that Romanians get to have every year.  His first one!  Ioana and I got him a little squeaky dragon toy which he seems to enjoy a lot, and various people have been calling or stopping by to wish him "la multi ani!" (happy birthday) and give him little things.  This has actually worked out pretty well from a dad perspective, as some of the gifts have been either money or home-made pastries, both of which are useless to babies and which I, as regent, dispose of as I see fit.  I.e., into my wallet or mouth.

Happy saint day, Gabe!

As part of our saint day activities, godfather Ovi came by with the car and drove us down to great-grandma and great-grandpa Negru's place, where we spent several hours hanging out, having lunch, looking at great-grandpa's watch collection, and trying to steal great-grandpa's hat.

The great-grandparents were happy to see the King, and a good time was had by all.  Eventually Gabe and I were just worn out and both decided to sack out in the bedroom.  As Gabriel often says in his position as Warden of the North, winter is coming, and you can really start to feel it these days in Bucharest.  The bedroom is the only room that's heated (by the wood-burning stove, which has the added bonus of smelling good).  Io and the g-g's* stayed outside chatting and eating.

In the photo above, you can see Gabe with his Girls Just Wanna Have Fun top-of-the-head ponytail.  In Romanian tradition, babies cannot have their hair cut during their first year because it will detach their soul.  After his first birthday, the godparents give him his first haircut.  That's fine for most babies, but Gabe was born with a full head of hair and it is not getting any shorter.  So sometimes he gets the ponytail to keep the bangs out of his eyes.

Two other Romanian superstitions I learned this week:

1. You cannot give someone a knife as a present, or it will "cut your friendship."  But you can get around this by having the person pay you some nominal amount for the knife.  Ovi gave us 1 lei (30 cents) when I tried to give him a Swiss army knife as a souvenir.

2. You cannot step on manhole covers that have six holes in them.  The kind with four holes are okay, though.  Obviously.

And that is really pretty much all we did the last two days.  We've been trying to keep it fairly mellow since it's my last week here, so there's been lots of regular home routine, going to the park, going to Auchan, etc.  It's been nice.  It should continue to be pretty low-key the rest of the week.

I've started getting back into the swing of work.  Emails are starting to arrive with questions and case status updates for next week, and I've started digging in to a tedious work project that I brought with me.  So it will probably be a pretty seamless transition back to work life.

Moment of Zen:

They just wanna, they just wanna...

* Note to self: good name for an all-girl rock band