lovin' life... lovin' food

Philly: Santucci’s Square Pizza

Philly’s Santucci’s Pizza is our latest favorite neighborhood spot. When I lived in RI I would often meet friends at Pizzeria Regina in Boston for an incredible pizza and a long wait in the crisp winter air. Since moving to Philly I haven’t quite found a pizza place that is as good, and I’m still on the hunt.

The best I’ve found so far is at Santucci’s Square Pizza. Since having Raffi, PB and I look for more casual, laid back restaurants where patrons wouldn’t be too offended by a stroller and a minute or two of tears now and again. We enjoy dining out and don’t want to lose that just because we have a baby. We were strolling through Philadelphia’s Italian market one weekend when we walked by Santucci’s. I quickly headed to Yelp and saw the reviews were good so we decided to stop for lunch.

Santucci’s is a classic pizza place. It is small and casual with no decor to really speak of. It feels like home in a way, like the type of place you’d want to return to time and time again. The food is great, and the prices are reasonable. I had a cheese pizza and a Caesar salad. The pizza is famously square with the sauce on top of the cheese. The crust was the extreme opposite of salty and had the perfect ratio of crunch vs. chew. The pizza is hard to describe in flavor, but I will sum it all up by saying that you can taste that the ingredients are fresh. I love that. PB had spaghetti and meatballs. While it was tasty, it was definitely not as delicious as my pizza.

Since that first encounter we’ve now gotten takeout pizzas a few times from there. We recently found out they deliver to our new home (we close Thursday and move in 10 days!!!!) so I know we will be indulging in their pizzas even more often.

We are still on the hunt for a pizza place that rivals Pizzeria Regina, but for now, Santucci’s is the winner.

Santucci’s Square Pizza
901 S. 10th Street (At Christian Street)
Philadelphia, PA 19147
215-825-5304

Raffi 3 month update

Raffi is 3 months old!

So much excitement this month with the holidays. Raffi and I visited RI for an entire week. He loved the ride and only cried once for about 2 minutes, but the first night was rough. He loves visiting with his aunties, uncles, cousins, and nonna bis (my nonna) as well as friends. We had lots of smiles and chatter starting that week. It was so fun. He was a spoiled prince with lots of entertainment, snuggles, gifts, and interaction.

We took him off his strict schedule and bedtime routine over the holidays, and he seems to be doing really well with us just winging it. Some days it seems he needs more structure than others. New Year’s Eve Raffi partied until 2 in the morning at the big Philly dance, and he loved all the music. Actually, he loved it so much he slept through half of it! We still want to get him on a strict nap schedule, but he doesn’t seem ready for longer naps. He is very much so a cat napper and needs about 5 shorter naps during the day.

After going back and forth on how to stop the swaddle, we decided to go cold turkey. I explain more about that in my latest Babycenter post. Check it out here!

Without swaddling and with all of his big boy outfits, Raffi is now officially a baby and not a newborn. So sad! Luckily he has become even more snuggly than before.

Tummy time is now a struggle when it used to be easy, but we push through it. Sometimes Raffi will roll from belly to back, and sometimes he just puts his head down and cries. Still other times he will just hang out looking around for a solid 10 minutes. He has great head control now, and you can’t hold him facing in when he’s awake. He MUST be able to see everything that is going on or he cries.

Nursing is still easy, and we made it through a fairly intense growth spurt without problem. Raffi gets distracted sometimes, and I love to watch him take a break to look around at the surroundings before he remembers he’s hungry and comes back to eat. Nursing laying down has helped R learn to roll from back to side and back again over and over. He is becoming really good at it.

Being a mom is still challenging for me at times. While others make it look so easy, I struggle now and again. I have a tough time feeling energized and not overwhelmed. I constantly feel like I have too much on my plate and I don’t know how to manage better. I hope that with time it gets easier to figure out how to do it all.

I still hate pumping and I hate giving R bottles. I feel like it is a lot more work, and I’d rather just make myself available every time R needs to eat. We make sure he gets at least 1 bottle a week, but since that requires thawing milk, making a bottle, giving a bottle, pumping, and cleaning bottle and pump parts I often avoid it.

Raffi is still stingy with his smiles with me, but he will smile a lot for his dad and others. I often feel like I’m just the moo cow and he sees me for food only, but then when he’s screaming and I’m the only one he will quiet down for I feel better. I like to feel needed for more than just food.

It’s fun to see how Trig and I turned out as parents. It’s seems like he is way more of a softie than I am. Raffi will lose his pacifier over and over again and I patiently wait while he tries to figure out how to get it back in his mouth, even if it involves some tears. Trig, on the other hand, can’t stand the tears and gives him the pacifier right away so he doesn’t suffer. Both approaches are ok with me, and it’s interesting to see how different we are. At the same time, Trig likes to let Raffi learn to play independently while I always feel that he needs constant interaction.

Talking, singing, and reading are all super fascinating right now. Raffi stares at our mouths and tries to repeat sounds. He especially likes when he read to him and just stares back and forth between the pretty colors of the book and our mouths.

Raffi loves his new baby carrier (the Britax- it’s awesome and so easy to use) as well as sitting in his new Boppy. We thought we didn’t need one, but man does he love lounging on it or sitting up in it.

Our current favorite Raffi tricks include

giving him a mohawk:

and making him float in a room:

Random facts:
Weight: 25-50th percentile
Height: 90th percentile
Sleep: 9-10 straight hours a night (ETA: we only got 6 last night, but I feel confident he will go back to his old ways once he gets used to not being swaddled)
Cloth diapers worn: 1
Outfit changes per day: 1-3, depending on the number of poopsplosions
Poopsplosions: Rare, but we had one really good one that went out the diaper, through his pants and on to his daddy’s sweatpants. Lovely.
Must haves: Wubbanub, Boppy to practice sitting up, 10 little ladybugs book, Discovery Toys baby grooves instrument set, hanging toys that he can grab and pull to his mouth
Songs we love to sing to him: Maramao, Batti le maninne, ABC’s, Na Na Naaaaa
Favorite book: 10 little ladybbugs

2 month update

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