Today we were supposed to do the Vatican tour, but after hearing about how crowded it is, we decided against it. We both agreed that taking James to such a crowded place with stairs and narrow halls would be really difficult. Also, as I mentioned in the last post, I was worried that he was starting to get sick and I kinda of wanted to take it easy and see how that played out.

When he woke up, he had a little low grade fever, and I decided to just pull the trigger and take him to the doctor. I think (actually, I know) that Justin thought I was overreacting and wanted to wait a little longer to see if things got better. However, he also knew that I was not going to be able to relax if I wasn’t sure that he didn’t have strep throat or an ear infection. Sooooooo, Justin somehow found a number to an English-speaking pediatrician, I called, and we had an appointment for later that afternoon.

Before the appointment we decided to walk to the Vatican just to see it, even though the tour didn’t work out. On our way, we passed through a market. I loved seeing all the fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, and cheeses. When we lived in Baton Rouge, I used to go to the farmer’s market every single Saturday morning. To say that I like markets is an understatement, and Italy seems to be the holy grail of markets. While we were there, We finally got James to eat something. He had a few pieces of watermelon, and I was thrilled. I’m pretty easy to please these days.

Once we got to the Vatican, James took a long nap while we walked around and took pictures. I was amazed at how many people were in line. It was incredible. Hopefully, if we are ever in Rome again, we can do the tour.

After that, it was about time for the doctor’s appointment. James seemed like he was perking up a bit, but I felt that we should still go and get everything checked out, if only for peace of mind. We were able to walk from our apartment and it took about 20 minutes. It wasn’t a bad walk, but one portion of it was steep uphill on cobble stone. We were quite a sight pushing James and the stroller up that hill. Hopefully, we worked off a fraction of the gelato that we’ve been eating.

The doctor was very nice. She spoke English very well. Her office was interesting. Very different from a traditional pediatrician’s office. Once we left the waiting room, we went into a large office-type room. It had a big desk with 2 chairs behind it and an exam table. She first sat at the desk and took his history while entering everything in the computer herself. Then, we did a thorough assessment. Height, weight (on a manual, not digital scale), and head circumference. I’ve never seen any pediatrician do this, usually it’s the nurse. She checked his ears, throat, etc. Everthing looked good. He had some swollen gums from his canines coming in. That could have been causing the problem. Also, he got 2 vaccinations on the Wednesday before we left so that may have been causing the problem as well. Either way, it seems like I was being a hypochondriac mom. Oh well! 90$ later and we were on our way home again.

Dinner was low key. Pizza and gelato in the square. The pizza in Rome is very different from what we have in the states. We got 2 different types. One basically just had fresh tomato sauce on it and a thin crust from a wood burning oven. The other one was pretty much just plain flat bread. No sauce and no cheese. They were both good and James liked them which made me very happy! He also ate some gelato. I think he’s finally getting his appetite back.

Tomorrow we travel to Florence

Ciao