If there’s a better day to break my three-month hiatus from posting here, I can’t think of one. It’s been such a perfect weekend in Paris that there really isn’t anything to complain about. The weather is warm, the skies are blue, and Dante is quickly growing to become this amazing little boy who surprises us every day. Add to this a wonderful new mom.

Now that all the pleasantries have been taken care of, I wanted to talk about the status of mikeandrion.com. It’s obvious that, seeing we’re nearly halfway through the year and have just a few blog entries to show for it, we (OK, mostly me) are just not cutting the mustard as master bloggers. Part of it, of course, is that Dante (not to mention his Flickr stream and Tumblr blog) takes up a lot of our free time. When he’s awake, blogging just isn’t happening. When he’s sleeping I’m too tired to write many words (kind of like right now) .

The other main reason why entries are sparse is because of the sheer normalcy surrounding our lives in Paris. After singing the praises of Picard, comparing this in Paris to that in New York, and complaining about exploding electronic appliances, two-plus years on and life here is amazing yet mundane: I get up, go to work, come home, eat, sleep, rinse and repeat.

We’re trying to decide right now whether we want to make an effort to breathe some life into this blog, or to retire it (yet keep the archives live) as a memento of our first two years in Paris. We’re leaning towards moving on to other projects; Rion, as always, will continue to highlight her fantastic photography on Rion.nu. As for me, I’m going to move on to a new solo blog (topic and domain TBA) and also try to get some more updates on the IHT Developer Blog (RSS).

If you haven’t already, I suggest subscribing to our RSS feed so when we post new info it will be delivered directly to your reader.

Thanks for following our story, and we’ll keep you posted.

On April 6, 2006, Mike and I landed — bleary-eyed — at CDG and took a taxi to the 11eme arrondissement with our 8-ish massive suitcases, and tipped the French cabbie some ridiculous amount by French standards. (Ah, New Yorkers.)

We’ve now lived in Paris for two years and I still have to look up how to spell arrondissement every time I type it. Joyeux anniversaire to us.

Above, Dante Fabrizio at 6 days old.

Thanks to Dad, Dante’s already got his own url and gmail account on reserve. He’s also on Flickr and Tumblr. Visit flickr.com/photos/nakatino/ and dante.tumblr.com for updates. They’re both mostly for the boy’s many grandparents in the States far far away, but if you enjoy (particularly cute) baby photos, you’re more than welcome to follow along.

We’re liable to be busy adjusting in the next few weeks, as well as updating those tumblr and flickr streams. Happily, we don’t update this blog enough for you to notice that we’re busy with a baby right now.

Laura brings yummy gifts.

One more note: Even though we’re far away from our families, we’ve had great support from our friends here in Paris.

Emails and IMs asking about Dante have been abundant, not to mention all of the great comments we’ve received on Flickr and here at MikeandRion.com.

A few of our friends came to hang out with us at the Clinique du Bien Naitre where he was born, and other lovely friends (thank you Bridget, Laura and Braden, and Bommy and John!) so thoughtfully brought extremely delicious lasagnas, chili-dishes, desserts, salads and other needed sustenances for the two new parents. We can’t thank all of you enough!

Dante Fabrizio Cosentino, being cleaned up and measured just minutes after birth. Blogged by Dad on Vimeo.

Born February 23rd at 18:02, in Paris. Dad also has the very first look. More photos from Mom on Flickr here and here.

We spent the weekend cleaning out the back of our walk-in closet, which mostly consisted of me sorting through about five large bins of papers, tossing out what I didn’t need, and re-packing it back down into one.

In the midst of it, I found:

• My resume from 1997, the one I got my first NYC job with.
• My first NYC lease from 1998 for a one bedroom on 91st street for $1,050/month.
• A print out from 9/13/99 from domainsondisc.com, listing the number of registered domain names by city. In the lead at that time: New York City with 101,359 registered domain names. Houston, San Francisco and Los Angeles follow with between 42,700-46,800 each.
• The euthanasia bill for my dog, JoDee, for $50 on 12/14/99.
• A letter from the IRS indicating that, because George W. Bush signed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (“which provides long-term tax relief for all Americans who pay income taxes”) into law, I would be receiving a check in the amount of $300.00 during the week of 8/27/2001. — Let me note that $300 didn’t help me “long-term” through the NYC work-lull after September 11th, but it did buy my fair share of 9/11 relief-cocktails.
• Mike’s 1998 lease in Williamsburg (where we first lived together in 2002) for a two bedroom on the edge of Greenpoint at $1,000/month.
• A xerox’d map of Cypress Hills Cemetery, highlighting the route from the entrance to Jackie Robinson’s grave.
• The euthanasia bill for my dog, Beckett, for $30, plus additional medical fees totaling over $250, on 12/22/03.
• More than two dozen fruitless web site design proposals for three different offices: large presentation books, earnestly written and rewritten over what I’m guessing totaled hundreds of hours, as they seemed important at the time…

Jan 4: Sending in our absentee registrations…

If voting isn’t generally a challenge in the United States — depending on who you are, where you live, and how easy it is for you to get off from work to get to your polling place at an hour when the lines aren’t too long — I wasn’t sure if it was going to be more or less challenging from abroad.

We not only deal with the common knowledge/possible urban myth that overseas votes aren’t even counted unless there’s a close result for the state that you’re registered with, but then there’s the general distrust of both the French and U.S. mail systems… not to mention a general cynicism about government organization in general… yadda yadda.

In addition — like the rest of the United States — Mike and I are excited about this election. Not only do we have no incumbent to deal with and no more chance that Bush can be re-elected, but there were many fine democratic choices on the ballot, and, for us, one clear choice.

This made the stakes for participation in the Primary even higher and more important to us.

I sent both of our absentee registrations into New York’s Borough Board of Elections on Varick Street on January 4th. To qualify for voting on February 5th (Super Tuesday), it needed to be postmarked by Jan 11th and received by the 16th.

It was the 15th or 16th when Mike’s NY Absentee Ballot arrived in the mail. He promptly filled it out and dropped it back in the mail, way ahead of the ballot postmark deadline of February 4th.

My ballot was MIA. continue…

…there just aren’t any nooks or crannies. Totally flat.

egg on an english muffin from cosentino on Vimeo.

Climb, Preggo, climb.

You’ve heard something about France’s outstanding medical care, yes? No doubt you’ve heard of the socialized benefits of having a baby here. And I’m sure you’ve heard rumor about the financial coverage of baby care and health care in general in France…

But have you heard about the severe lack of public transportation support for those with special needs? Man oh man, it’s backwards to what you’d think…

In hiking around Paris during my pregnancy — now coming up on 38 weeks — I can tell you that I’ve climbed more stairs than you have in the last nine months.

Yes, there are those five flights of stairs in our building, but the metro is notorious for not having elevators and escalators available to exit, as well as for also having looooooong tunnel transfers with 10 stairs down here, and 20 stairs up over here, and another 10 up there. — I start well on the way out to destinations, but I am one slow climber on the way back home.

There are buses running throughout town that make special needs travel a bit easier, and evidently all stops on the 14 line are accessible, but I’m hardly ever on the 14, and despite the solid bus system, the Paris metro is just too damned fast and familiar for this ex-NYC resident.

So even though I take it as a personal fitness challenge, I can’t imagine the hurdles someone with real physical limitations must have to deal with in this town. It’s an old, old city and supporting those special needs is just not the given here like I thought it would be.

I can say, however, that even though I’ve gained about 30lbs of baby weight, it’s pretty much all in my belly. I am grateful to all those stairs for keeping my legs and butt in fine shape. Merci, Paris.