Happy Birthday Emanuele

Today was Emanuele's first birthday. The party was held in the park just below the apt complex. It's a nice clean, gated park with tables - no dog poop and lots of things to play on! Max has been gone since thursday, so we had to take the Metro there - which was a good thing because Sophia keeps asking to go on a train. I've been using it as a 'prize'/'inspiration' to do things-eat, clean up, etc. Of course as soon as we had gone about 5 stops, she was. So, when we got there , she was already kind of in a grumpy mood since we didnt get off the train when she wanted. All she wanted to do was go on the swing, but i really wanted to help Priyanthi (the mommy) set up. I figured out later that she didnt really know anyone except Maria Amali (the sister) and I think going on the swing was her way of being shy - and not having to play with people she didnt know. Priyanthi and Paolo (the dad) are really sweet people, with really sweet friends (and kids) and eventually they got Sophia to go and play. And of course she had such a good time, she didnt want to go home . Priyanthi and Paolo ended up inviting us over for dinner (party left overs - which were really good!) and the girl's played together some more . Tanti Auguri Emanuele!
(his sister is sitting in front of the cake, he is above her - otherwise he would be the little guy IN the cake) (the two older little girls on the right used to go to the pre-school where we worked years ago, the one in the pink was just 2 when I met her, look how grown up the girl's are now!)

Emanuele opening presents.

Sophia playing ball with Maria Amali
(i couldnt get a decent picture of them together, they kept moving all around!)

The girls were so grimey after rolling around in the park, so into the bath they went! You know I dont really like pictures using flash, it flattens them out and makes every thing seem so flat, but this one is kind of cool because it has all the water droplets).

Here is another one (with flash again, but no cool water droplets)

of the two little monkeys havin a good ol' time in the bath!

Long day! Time for bed!!

Last Day of School

Today was Sophia's last day at the Asilo di Via Boccaccio. She had lots of fun and made lots of good friends. I don't think she really realized what was going on, although all the teachers (from this year and last year) we all sad and nostalgic.Filamena, Sophia and Chiara

Sophia Parisi, Sophia Mandato and Nicolò
(At school there are a lot of girls called Sofia/Sophia so they all call each other by last name.)

Marica a teacher from last year.

Running out of school. The poster in back is from an educational campaign from the city. They took pics of kids from all the preschools and put some of them onto the poster. Sophia's is on there....somewhere....there are so many of them and just headshots, it actually looks like some kind of sad orphanage poster.

After school, we ran home, dropped of all her stuff, walked down to the metro and over to pietro's house. i forgot to take pictures, it was just one of those days. paolo brought us back home and sophia opened her present that the asilo gave her (and will give all the other kids in july). staying with the theme this year, animals, she received an elephant hat! prrrrrprrrrrprrrp (that's supposed to be an elephant noise).

uh, holber

last night we went to jerry's house in brescia (that's holber's dad). since we're leaving next week, we had to get some jingles recorded asap before we got on the plane and jerry has a studio in his 'man cave.' he also has loads of toys to mess around with which is exactly what holber is doing.

Sestri Levante

Baia del Silenzio

This week we went to Sestri (in Liguria) with Pietro and Franci. Next year the kids start scuola materna (pre-school from 3-5 years old) and they need to be potty trained to go, Franci thought that a week at the sea and a little mommy bonding time would be a good way to start. We came along to be the cheering team and hopefully catch a little fun in the sun and fresh air. We did a lot of cheering, but there were only pockets of sun. But we had loads of fun anyways!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

ps i caught a bug and now i am hating it. i think im the only person who went to the ligurian coast and came back paler. also, usually i eat a ton of focaccia and pesto, having caught a stomach flu the 2nd day, i really didnt eat anything. well, at least i didnt gain my standard seaside 5kilos.

Guess who just turned three too?

Oliver and Max just celebrated their third birthday (mentally speaking) with a round of Balloon Baseball, i can't understand why this hasnt taken off at the national level yet.and later there was Slam Dunk the Balloon into Greta's Head
another sport that has a just a cult following...for now at least.

The Birthday Day

The Nonni stayed 'til this afternoon. We had a birthday grigliata (pronounced greel-ya-ta - means bbq) with loads of meat, a favorite of my little carnivore.

Tanti Auguri Pia

Make a Smilebox slideshow

How old is Mommy?

I taught Sophia some math today...I ask how old is Mommy and she says '25'! The gang came over for a last minute brindisi (toast) for my 25th bday. Holber, Gweta, Critz and Ida got me a digital frame. Manlo and Kha-tia gave me a beautiful skirt and top. Max and Pia got me a new digital camera. I love it all, thanks!!!

The Holber and Pia Jam Fest.

Rode our bike to Holber's house today. Holber and Sophia played with all his musical noise makers. They even managed a song together- twinkle twinkle little star. Then somebody decided she was fed up and the weather turned and Holber ended up driving us home. Our bike is having a slumber party at Holber's now.

BTW Holber and Gweta came over for Fajitas Part Dos, there we loads of left overs and we know that those dos locos are always good to help as clean up crew!

Permesso Party, the Re-Take

Remember back a few weeks ago when we had the group over, but we didnt actually get to celebrate the fact that I got the permesso. This time around we didnt count our chickens before they hatched and waited until we actually had the document in hand before calling people to come over.

Simo and Pino

Max scarfing down a fajita
(yeah i know its not traditional food, but it was easy to feed the masses)

Fabbio and Holber got into a fajita eating contest. Fabbio had 5

but the winner was holber!

Jenny

OMG, OMG my friend Jenny (the Finn that lives in OZ) got in an accident today. She was just exiting from the freeway when traffic suddenly came to a complete stop. The girl in the car behind her didn't brake, the starting domino for the other 4 cars. Since Jenny was about to exit, she just tapped the car in front of her, but her car is now demolished. Her final comment on the subject was I should should have known...yesterday I was washing the car and I noticed a scratch and all I kept thinking was 'Great, now my car is RUINED!' Ah ha ha ha, Jenny you kill me!

Pombia

Guess where we went?

Betcha didn't know there is a Safari Park here!

Sophia took some pictures for her field journal (like Diego).
It's the point and shoot camera I used in a life before digital,
too bad we didnt have any batteries, i would love to see what pictures she took!

After you drive thru the 'safari' area, you can walk thru the rest of the park. There is a small aquarium (seriously, really small- there are like 16 tanks and they arent all used- but the kids dont know or care). It's really dark inside at first, so Sophia cried and cried and didn't want to go in - with the aquarium being so small, I could understand the claustrophobia. We cuddled and coaxed her and eventually convinced her to go inside and of course she had a really good time.

Sssssssssssssssssssss!
(On the way out of the park we passed the aquarium and reptile room, Sophia was so proud of not being scared, we had to back in again!)

A pony ride on the Western Farm.It's the middle of the week and not quite 'field trip' season, by the time we made it over to the rides, the park was empty. We went on everything again...

and again....

and again.

Lake Orta

The Safari Park is on a direct path to nasty traffic if you head back at the wrong hours. It is also really close to Lago Maggiore and Orta if you head in the opposite direction. Instead of sitting in the car and car exhaust for a few hours, Max had the brilliant idea to go for dinner on one of the lakes. This is Lake Orta, it's smaller and not as famous as Maggiore or Como, and is often overlooked (altho, I know my Mom has been there, of course where hasnt she been??). We had a fantastic dinner of lake fish and Isola di San Giulio was the view from our table.

For a Catholic Country, They Sure Aren't Prudes

OSHA would have a field day with this:

Look carefully at the 2 men on the roof - they are in their skivvies! Dicky-dos are never a pretty sight (fyi dickydo is when yo stomach hang out farther than your dicky do) . And...I know its hot, but isn't that dangerous? You cant really make it out in the picture, but i guess it was the first time they stripped, cuz they were all pink and sun burned, at first glance, i thought they had some weird pink unitards on or something- then i realized they were in their tighty-whities (or tighty red-ies and tighty dark blue-ies as the case may be). Well, thinking upon it - tighties are probably better to keep the boys in - its probably much more dangerous to have the family jewels hanging out and either get snagged on something (they werent that young of men - gravity takes its toll on those guys too. im sure those things were dangling like the chimes on a grandfather clock!) or worse -what if while hammering, they hit something other than the nail on the head. Oh the crazy things you see in Italy. ps sorry the foto is crap, but I took it while riding on the back of a moving scooter.

The End of the Clandestine Era

We got up early this morning, Max went on the moped to go stand in line and I dropped off Sophia at the preschool, then took the metro to meet him. This was attempt number 3 to get the Permit of Stay.
Max stood in line and got number 959. At 9:21 the number counter was at 925. We took bets as usual Max guessed 10:40 and I guessed 11:00. At 11:12 they called our number - Max owed me lunch again. I am 2 for 2 - if there is one thing Italy has taught me its how to guess how long the wait will be! Time flew anyways, I had a bottle of water, sudoku and episodes of csi, my name is earl and lost uploaded onto the LG.
The guy who helped was young and nice (amazing-usually they are older and jaded). Which made the fact that we were smashed between a service window that had never been cleaned (it had forehead imprints and spittle marks all over i) and people behind us trying to ask '1 more' question (and apparently dont believe in 'personal space') to the first person they saw since there was no information desk, slightly less annoying. Then guess what happened - we were missing 2 documents that we didnt know we needed, (one was the receipt to the last disastrous appointment/attempt to get the permesso di soggiorno. Apparently we had to 'officially' claim that we didnt go to that appointment, only the last idiot didnt tell us that we needed to do that). Max was like 'please dont tell me we have to start all over again! Can we come back tomorrow? or later today?' Thank god the guy said yes. Soooo...went back home to search for missing documents (which we werent even sure we had anymore-but eventually found them), Max paid his lunch debt at the new South American restaurant down the street and we went back again.
There was hardly anyone there (and now we were able to see how disgusting the place really was, it was sooo dirty, and dingy and grey. i don't think anyone every cleaned, i really wanted to take a picture, but Max wouldnt let me - from fear of what happened last time. The smell of pee filled the now empty room, but at least there was a place to sit. The floors were marked by old gum turned black and old abandoned wrappers/newspapers slid across the room in the rare breeze, and other disgusting things, I tried hard not to look too closely). This time around we were helped quickly - still smashed in between the spittle window and a group of people trying to get some answers (the few people that were there, were all congregated behind us). Finally, the documents were exchanged/entered/dealt with and we were given ANOTHER number.
It was actually lucky that we had left and come back because there was no waiting this time. But....we entered another disgusting room, there was a broken sink on the floor, pieces of all scattered around, another broken and dirty sink dangling from the wall and black finger prints squished on the walls - left over from before the electronic era. I had leave electronic finger prints (and touch a dirty nasty wet chamois - even the girl who took the finger prints stuck latex gloves on first) and stick my phalanges on a very dirty and disgusting high tech, csi lookin, scanning machine. When we finished, I could not get the Bath and Body Strawberry Scented Anti-Bacterial Soap out fast enough!!! Seriously, I thought I was going to throw up - that place can make anyone a germaphobe!
Then we had to wait ONE more time for the document to come out and be handed to us. Again, this went by quickly because it was late in afternoon. There were few who were still waiting. Now you probably ask, why didnt we just come in the afternoon to begin with? Thats because they only give out a certain number of numbers in the morning and then you are SOL. Anyhow, the long of the short of it is...

We did it!

Along the Martesana

The group (sans max) CLOIGS (cris, louise, oliver, greta, ilaria, sophia) (altho with max it would be glimocs or smogcil scoilgm? yes well you get the point), (back to our story)...for a bike ride along the martesana. Why is it that ALL italians go out at exactly the same time. It was full, full, full of people. And no one cares about what side of the road they walk, skate, ride, stop on. No matter how many times i rang my bell, NO ONE stepped to the side! My camera's batteries ran out so I didnt get a picture. Dang! There wont be a second chance, because i dont ever plan on going out Sunday afternoon EVER again! But it was fun anyways. Props to OG who rode their bikes from Carrugate to our house, then back home again. And double props to O who came back and cooked everyone a thai dinner. Again, no fotos- too bad, it was hella good!
This is the one and only pic i did get. Unfortunately, the CLOIGS are in a deep discussion about Max Pezali and Zero Assoluto. They are both classic examples of crappy Italian music that people are crazy for. (Comment on the later one Zero Assoluto means Absolute Zero - which is the amount of talent they have, why would they chose that name? plus it contains the word ass. youtube them and listen for yourselves.) Why the heck were we talking about them anyways?

The Grass Blowers

2:18 am Wake up, can't sleep due to too much caffeine.
3:20 am Pee, due to too much coffee, cant go back to sleep, eventually doze off.
3:48 am ditto
4:14 am ditto
etc etc etc until:
6:30-8:15 Decide that I cant sleep, birds are chirpin too loudly anyways. so, i stumble out of bed, feeling like the morning after a night of snorting meth, coke or some sort of sleep depriving drug (and all i really did was stay up til midnight). check cnn, foxnews, fb...good grief its still early! i even checked people.com. i read articles i dont even care about, obama's wife says to move on after the distancing from the controversial reverend? did mariah carey get married? i even youtube'd while waiting for sophia to get up. opened her shutters. poked her. opened door to balcony, took inside folded clothes from the 'italian dryer'. stare at sophia, poke her. i didnt really wanna try too hard to get her up due to the fact that she did that biochemical waste hazard last night - was she still sick? she never sleeps this late. if we wanted to catch to the 9:42 train to mondonico we had to be out the door by 8:45.
8:30 i poke poke. she rubs eyes and finally, in groggy scratchy voice: 'MILK'! Cool could we still make the train?
8:38 pia arrives at table. guess we cant make that dang train after all. i thought i could have convinced her to eat breakfast on the way to the metro, but she wasnt having that. oh well....
i guess we would go for the 10:39 train.
9:10 double check backpack...oh crud, only 2 diapers left and knowledge that the yogurts revenge may not yet be over. we run to the market and pick up a pack (9.69E for pampers 14 diapers, went for the cheapy 8.50 packet containing 24 diapers).
9:38 wrestle sophia, stroller, enormous backpack down the stairwell and out the front gate.
9:45 see the metro roll past us...crap, oh well, the next one should come within 20 mintutes that still leaves us, 20 for the metro ride and another 20 to get the ticket and walk to the tracks. whew okay.
9:50 tick, tick, tick. oh good i hear a train. oh crap its from the other direction. okay 5 minutes to get to the end of the line and another 5 to turn around and come back. we can still make it.
10:00 tick, tick, tick okay where is the train??
10:01 -10:10 same as 10:00
10:11 finally the train arrives. crud, okay 20 minutes for travel time will put us at 10:31 and 9 minutes to run up the stair, into the train station stand in line and buy the tick.
10:28 inside train station, but line is long, will use ticket issuing machine. run to only open machine, only to be cut off by these 2 japanese girls, who besides snaking me from the backside on purpose, dont know how to use the machine and so are taking forever.
10:30 look around for new machine. one by one they fill up. the 2 girls go try there luck somewhere else.
10:33 i can still do it. dang the machine wont take all the numbers to my bank card and now is stuck in the middle of a transaction. cancel, cancel, abort, abort! good grief hurry!!!
10:35 run to new machine (ha those stupid girls are still at the machine and still dont know what they are doing). this machine takes bills. insert 1 bill, spits it out. insert again, spits it out. try another, spits it out. i try about 6 bills and none of them work. the ticket is just 2.70 so i fumble in my pockets and my purse for some change. i have just barely enough. come on, come on, print faster. validate ticket in machine (because despite having bought a ticket for a specific train at a specific time, all tickets must be validated...if you can find a machine that works).
grab fold up stroller, strap on backpack, run with sophia down the escalator, down hall, check for which track the train is boarding from. its 14 cool, its right here, run up stairs. stop, stroller under one arm, backpack on back, sophia under other arm, run, run, run! oh good some other girl is running and shouting for the train to wait. toot toot - jerk off couldnt wait another 30 seconds??? the conductor closes the doors in our faces and takes off. defeated. there is only 1 train every hour.
10:39 and 15 seconds set sophia down, drag folded up stroller down stairs, thump, thump, thump. open stroller, shove sophia in, push her down the hall. check, double check and recheck to see if, perhaps by magic another train is scheduled to arrive. there is another going towards lecco (like ours) but doesnt stop in ever god forsaken town, like the one we are going to, so we are s.o.l. at least those stupid girls have missed their train too, i see them wandering around.
10:41 stare at departure sign, wander around, stare at sign some more get offered a dont use fur flyer - but refuse.
10:51 wander some more, offer of same flyer -refuse.
10:56 go to get a cappuccino and brioche (croissant) from autogrill. jelly one for sophia and a cream filled one for me. sit down. capp is watery and tepid, brioche is dry. and...oh great, urine smell from bathroom passes our way everytime someone opens the door. not making things tastier. sophia whines that she doesnt like the brioche. then she shouts 'I DONT LIKE BRIOCHE pffftttt!' she is in this shout, defiance, make a scene out of anything stage, whats the scientific name called??? being a TODDLER? ack! then she whines that some jelly has dripped on her, set my brioche down on a napkin to help her clean up the sticky stuff. she grabs the napkin and drops my brioche on the ground, splat - cream everywhere. scream at sophia impatiently to have a little patience. clean it up. feel kinda badly 'bout screaming, offer to eat the jelly part so she can just eat the bread. and sglop...OMG, this stupid thing is filled with about a cup of liquid jelly that has just gooshed out everywhere! break off empty dry end part and try to make amends, but there is still a drop of jelly and she isnt having it. starts into new shout tantrum and so off we go...
11:02 wander around and get offered another flyer (some 2 people keep asking) i take it so i can show them my 'pass' the next time and they will stop asking me. great hands are all sticky from the jelly, stupid flyer is sticking everywhere.
11:03 walk into bookstore while trying to shake off flyer. cant look at anything because flyer is too dang sticky, but bathrooms are too far away to go and come back.
11:18 cant take it anymore i am sticking to everything. if csi comes by, they will be able to see a very visible and distinctive thumb print on every book ive touched. go search for bathrooms (not the urine smelling ones at autogrill).
11:25 luck turns around - find bathrooms, but it cost .60 cents (almost a dollar to go pee!). no one is at the cash register, so i walk past and just go in. there is even one stall opened and its all very clean!
11:30 find train tracks, find train already there, find a seat, sit down. whew! call franci to let her know we will arrive at 12:20.
12:20 franci is at the station waiting. i give her the biggest hug in the whole wide world and apologize profusely for being late!

The kids run and chase each other through the orchard.

Pietro plops down on the grass.
He looks guilty of something, wonder what trouble he is going to get in next...

Sophia on the hunt for her BFF Pietro and dandelions.

Sophia is enamored with Pietro's cousing Emanuele (aka Lele) and she follows the poor kid around everywhere speaking english to him.
Sophia and Alice draw in the drawing room.

Hangin out with Seltz, Lele and Alice's short haired cat.Franci and her brother Filipo teach Elena and me how to blow on grass and make noise, something they used to do as kids for hours. It took me forever to get it.

Wondering what whistling with grass sounds like?Take a gander at the video. If you wanna save yourself 20 seconds, read on: it sounds like some weird freaky godzilla dying a horrible and agonizing death. It's hard to distinguish filipo (who is blowing on the grass) from his son lele (who is just screaming). sorry its filmed ala blair witch/cloverfield, but sophia was pulling on my arm.

Lele chews on some wild grass that tastes like lemon.

The Witches and Warlocks carpool around the patio.

* other activities not pictured: fantastic lunch of pasta, meatloaf with rosemary picked from garden, salad and spinach picked from garden and pasticini (little cakes and pastries) from local bakery. playing under table while everyone else ate. playing and sing to alessandro . walking thru the woods to look for gigantic snails. hunt for lizards. bug watching. bug poking. flower picking. blowing dandelion after dandelion. searching for 4leaf clovers. picking eating wild strawberries. dog piling francesca. kicking a deflated soccer ball. playing in the old garden shed. ah to be a kid again (instead of just running after them!)

6:20 train back to Milan and of course i have to run again because i always seem to be late! Whew what a day!

La Vendetta dello Scaduto

The Albanian is working the Oompa-Loompa circuit down near Rome. Pia and I walked with him to the metro station, well sort of...we got halfway thru the park and then somebody wanted to pick the biggest biggest flower. Stupidly, I did not toss down an Allegra before exiting and so spent the majority of the time trying to convince her that it would be a lot more fun playing in the on the jungle gym...alla italiano of course, it was blocked off with some metal gates and tape (as it has been for months, thought that they would have fixed it by now). she was peeved so, we ended up playing in the fountain instead.
It's a favorite pass time of italian kids after they are bored with the slide and swing. This one is kind of cesspool lookin, the graffiti doesnt help, but the water is clean and filtered and you can even drink it.
If you dont have a water bottle to fill, there is a clever little way to have a sip without having to bend down and get all wet. There is a hole on the top of the faucet, so you plug the bottom part with one finger and the water shoots out the hole...be careful if you see a bunch of teenagers gathered around one of these, they like to squirt passers by.
I told Sophia that tomorrow we are going on the train to Pietro's in Mondonico, but only if she went to bed and stayed in it...and she did. she took my word so seriously, that apparently despite the revenge of the yogurt, she didnt make a peep or get out of bed. I walked in and there was a major chemical bomb that slapped me in the face...it had to happen sooner or later...and of course i had to clean up the aftermath of the biological warfare that took place in her stomach. i know it could have all been avoided, if only i had read the expires on date!