Mr. Daredevil, originally uploaded by Incurable Optimist.

Mr. Daredevil is becoming a teenager today.

He has sneaked up on me 13 years ago as I was sipping my Chianti in beautiful Tuscany. I already had a boy whom I was still nursing and who was about to celebrate his first birthday, so another baby wasn’t in my plans for such a near future. We have been enjoying our vacation touring from Monte Carlo through the South of France down the West Coast of Italy, stopping at Le Cinque Terre and ending in Salvadonica, a beautiful farm in Tuscany, half way between Firenze and Sienna. And it was there, surrounded with olive groves and hills covered in grapevines that Mr. Daredevil came to be. One day I will take him back to the tranquil stone cascina in the Tuscan hills.