Not unreasonably, the question is being asked early and often…how did the children do? By which they mean the 4-year old and the 1-year old we dragged to Rome. Katie, for her part, did fine – helped a great deal by various tour guides, who, I think, are important for helping keep teens engaged. I could be pointing interesting stuff out to her, and believe me, the response is quite different if the same stuff is being pointed out by a 23-year old seminarian or a vivacious art historian. Or even an overly dramatic Italian woman speaking English with a quite undefinable accent.

Well, the little ones did fine. The baby had his ride – we did not take a stroller, and just depended on the carrier. I think it was the right decision, and there were certainly many places where the stroller would have been a hassle and not a help…but there were places where the stroller would have done just fine and boy it would have been good to not have that baby on our backs.

He did far better with Michael than me. It wasn’t just the hair thing. Something about proximity to me agitates people. Well, my little children, at least. I see this at home – the baby can play in his cage (as we call it) very peacefully, for long periods of time – if I’m not in the room. Everyone else in the family can be around, and he doesn’t care. But if I’m there…he wants out.  Which will explain why, if you come to my house some days, and it’s just he and I, I’ll be in my study, and he’ll be in the cage in the living room. Please don’t think badly of me for it. It’s called survival.

Anyway, if we were outdoors, and I was carrying him, he generally did okay, but once we got inside, he wanted down…but no so much if Michael had him. And sometimes I had to stay out of sight when Michael was carrying him, as well, or else restlessness and revolution would break out.

The worst, though, was when he fell asleep in the carrier. Michael noticed it first, of course, but the first time he fell asleep and I had him…boy. He had been right – it was like he was ten pounds heavier. I could just tell he was asleep by how heavy he felt on my back. There’s a physics lesson in that, I have no doubt.

Joseph was a trooper. Oh, he usually had something to whine about or pester about, but given the fact that he was being marched around Rome, he did very, very well. There were times he was worse than others, but that’s all fatique related, as you might expect. We did a lot of bribery – gelato, of course, as well as toys.  One night, we wandered over Piazza Navona and looked into the window of the pricey Berte toy store  – the FAO Schwarz of central Rome (although much smaller, of course). All the next day, he asked, "Can we go to that place? Can we go to that toy store?" and of course, that became the bribe of the day.

He did, eventually, get to his toy store where, having been lectured and warned endlessly – nothing big, nothing expensive – I let him pick….Legos.

Turned out to be the best investment of the trip. 7 Euros for a small set that ended up keeping him completely occupied every evening in the apartment.

So yes, they did fine. The friendly Romans helped, as did the various friends we met along the way, like at this restaurant not too far from the Colosseum:

(Click on the pic for a bigger version – it’s really clear)

The little boy in the back was Mirco (I guess that’s how it was spelled), the son of one of the servers – he spent his time running back and forth in front of the place, chasing pigeons and interacting with our two. His mother tried to shoo him away at first, but I said..no, no..let him stay, knowing full well that he’d keep the baby entertained, at least. And he did.

Traveling to anyplace but DisneyWorld with small children can be controversial in some quarters. I read some comments in various places, "Rome doesn’t have much for children…why would you take them there?" I didn’t quite understand what that meant. What’s "for" children? Obnoxious busy Play Palaces? Amusement parks? Rome has both a children’s science museum and amusement parks large and small, which were definitely on my contigency list, but I have to say that this notion that children’s travel should be commercially and "entertainment" focused is beyond me.

We teased Joseph before we left because, to be frank, he hates going to Mass, and MIchael would tease him, "Do you know what you’re going to see in Rome? Churches!" Which did not inspire happiness on the boy’s part.

But of course, churches in Rome are not Holiday Inn lobbies. They are full of interesting pictures, dead bodies and body parts, and candles. To be able to light a candle is just about as exciting as punching a button on a blasted gravity display or something at one of those children’s museums to a 4-year old. And more meaningful, too, for, when properly directed, as Joseph was every step of the way by his father, the candle-lighting is followed by a drop to the knees and the recitation of a prayer in a sweet 4-year old voice – the Hail Mary, being the one prayer he knows beginning to end at this point.

And most of the churches – the big ones at least – have piazzas in front, pigeons who live there who, it seems, were created to be chased by little boys. And yelled at by the babies who, even though immobile in their backpack, learned quickly to lean down and shout "Boo!" at the pigeons, too.

There is much about a place like Rome that can’t be experienced with small children, especially those with the energy that ours have – those leisurely Roman suppers for one – but there’s much that can. And can be experienced even more freshly through the eyes of a child.

Where are we going next?