The Incy Wincy Spider...

we went down to the storage unit in the basement to try and cram another few objects in there. you have to go down the stairs and the last step lands between the door that leads outside and the door that leads to our storage unit entrance. at the bottom of the stairs, between the 2 doors was a giant and hairy tarantula. okay, it wasnt giant, but it was all puffed up and gross and it was definitely hairy- peppered with wirey beige and brown that made it look even more sinister. i always feel bad about killing spiders, they say they're supposed to bring luck. ( with ants and mosquitos, no problem. spiders actually eat other freaky flying things, so try not to kill them. they seem like fairly intellegent creatures. and being that i did see Arachnophobia-i'm not messing with those things...or so i thought....). of course i dont want to touch the thing, so i tell max to kind of use his foot and shove it towards outside. so he kind of shuffles it towards out with his instep. of course, it scampers back towards the basement door. so, he kind of gently kicks it again, a little more aggressively this time so as not to let it go under the basement door and... SPLOOT. WTF? what was that? little black OMG! oh Hells NO! little black, fully formed spiders spill out from the tarantula. i kid you not,the darn thing was pregnant! and so of course even more desperately max starts kicking the thing towards outside and of course the more he kicks, the more little fully formed spiders start scampering out. by the time max gets the damn thing to the door, at least 50 little 1mm fully formed, already moving, spiders have been kicked out of this hairy tarantula. it was something out of a nasty horror film. as max is kickin the momma outside, i had to start stomping on the babies, because i didnt want them going into our storage unit and making freaky nests in there!( i gotta go down there every day and get my bike to take soph to school). there are sooooo many that i cant getthem all. great! i could feel the eyes of the surviving brothers and sisters. watching me in horror as i exterminate their siblings, one after another. the momma, exhausted and traumatized after such a horrific delivery. i am sure the surving spiders are gonna take revenge. the momma spider is probably organizing right now with her little ones on how they will take revenge on us! i am totally freaked out to go into the storage unit. i was already afraid it was haunted and now this???? if autopsy comes back and says we aint dead from the toxic yellow stuff on the walls, look for spider bites! ewwwwww! nasty!

ps the sophia drew that picture even though she wasnt there and i never said anything to her....could she have some sort of esp???? it looks like some weird freaky spider-eye!

The Chart

It's been such a pain in the butt getting Sophia to do things lately. we've made a chart of all the stuff she has to do through out the day (the stuff she fights us for: getting dressed, cleaning up, etc) and then we tape a prize up on the door. my mom says that it teaches kids immediate gratification, but i dont care - i just need the mornings to not be a battle all the time! unfortunately, unlike on super nanny, the whole chart thing doesnt work every time. sometimes she just doesnt care, but things are much better than before. maybe she just needs to get used to the whole thing. this is such a silly pic. it looks like sophia is getting a medal of honor, its just hungry hungry hippos. (this first chart she got a sort of big prize, but the other prizes are little things (that she needs) like a tooth brush - im such a cheapo! we'll see if that smile stays that big when she sees the next thing she wins!) ps in case you are wondering, there are blank spaces on the chart, because those were the days that she went to the nonnis.

Yessi

Guess what I did??? I worked...well sort of. Some friends of a friend (Daniela) are starting their own line of clothing called Yessi. They needed a translator for a tradeshow they were participating in. Unfortunately the show was slow and they didnt get much business and so I translated very little. It was a good experience and hopefully we will do it again one day. Besides the girls were fun to hang out with.

These are for my Auntie Chelle

went to play at the park today. sophia is such a girlie girl. she likes to go around and pick flowers (i always freak out because dog pee or worse, poop!). Today she picked these and said they were for her auntie chelle.

Evening News for Bimbos

Italian lesson number 922:
bimbo means:
a) dirty cleave wearing floozy
b) hoochy male
c) kid

If you guessed c). that would be correct. It actually means boy or kid. Girl is actually bimba. It's funny to be at the park and hear kids call each other bimbo. but I digress....

I know the picture is crappy, and I was going to erase it when I noticed the TV. If the picture was bigger you could see the time is 6:33pm and it is the evening news. It's the gossip part, but still, it's pretty hoochy for the evening. This is why I only let Sophia watch videos! Italians make fun of Americans for being prudes/censorship for regular tv. I, on the other hand, always think that it's weird for such a religious country to be so contradictory about what they have on TV/'role models' and how they would like people to act in real life. must my daughter be exposed to nasty fake hoochy mamas on regular tv? okay, off my soapbox now. thanks.

Happy Birthday Fabbio

Cheers! Today was Fabbio's bday. All the boys were out of town, so just the girls came over for lunch. too bad for the boys cuz it was good!

Me, Soph, Pino, Fabbio, ML, Si

Pia Dato

Sophia Parisi met a friend last year at the other preschool named Sofia Mandato, but since she calls herself PiaParisi, it follows suit that she calls the other Sofia, PiaDato. Anyhoo, the Mandatos invited us over for dinner with another one of the families from school and the kids played together.Max tries to get the hang of holding a little baby, its been a while!

Nicolo getting jiggy with it.

All the kids got a chance to sing happy unbirthday to you and blow out the candle.

Come Il Duomo

OMG Did I mention our house is under construction? Just before we left to Germany we saw a notice that there would be some construction on the building. Then the friday Sept 12 we left there was a notice 'Please take down venetian blinds and screens and free balconey of all personal items, by Sept 12.' Yeah we jumped right on that...
By the time we got home, our house looked like this:

oh you thought that was the Duomo in Milan, didnt you???

(ironically, the Duomo is actually uncovered, i guess all those guys came here)

Okay now this is the disgusting part, that yellow stuff STINKS! it's very chemical and is used to melt the stucco off the walls (instead of chipping it). I bet its much faster and less noisy than chipping it away, but umm...TOXIC??? Is there no OSHA or anything here?
Okay the really scary thing is that despite the heavy chemical smell, this guy was puffing away on a cig while schmearing that yellow gunk on the wall. (Yes, that means he wasnt wearing a face mask for his own protection, no one was).

Plop Plop Plop. That looks NASTY!
needless to say i have headaches and nausea and our house is constantly dusty and cold because i need to keep the keep the windows opened 24/7 so we dont die, id hate to think what kind of cancer or tumor we may be at risk of now! luckily for us they are changing the asbestos roofing at the same time. If we dont get sick one way, we will get it another. If I'm found dead of mysterious causes, somebody show that picture above please! (Luckily Sophia is out of the house most of the day, we've been doing play dates so she is out at least 10 hours a day).

The Long and Winding Road

Auf Wiedersehen! So sad, it's back to Milan today. We'll miss the Andersons. I dont know how Sophia will cope without Miss Tia.

Front view of the AndersonHaus

Crazy Freeway. In Zurich it runs right thru the middle of the city, reminds me of SF, but worse!

The people watching us watching them.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Our little Piacasso drew a portait of Max.
Unlike the real Picasso, they didnt accept this scribbled on placemat and we had to actually pay for our lunch, darn!

Finger Lickin' good

BBQ! MMMMMMMM! What didnt the Andersons do for us??? We were treated like royals! After the zoo, Michelle bathed Sophia and Kevin Q'd. To his credit, Max had to work. I on the other hand, did diddly, wait not true, I helped drink beer! On the menu: kids menu: burgers. adult menu: salad, ribs, bbq beans and all the beer you could drink. mmmmm mmmm!Kevin fires up the BBQ.

Treated like royalty, but eats like manic.

Caption contest:
Whoever thinks of the best caption for this picture wins a lifetime subscription to our blog. ha ha!

Kevin and Michelle and I ponder why we ate so much...i guess because it was so dang good!

Stuttgart Zoo, the hunt for elephants and polar bears

Bedtime was so late last night, that the girls took a bath this morning.

Miss Tia and Miss Pia on the metro.

(look how nice and clean it is! its quiet too! we live a mile away from our metro & can hear it loud and clear! the Andersons live 500 feet away & we didnt even know the metro passed nearby!)

The girls hover over the fish. I was sure someone was going to fall in!

Max and Pia check out birds in the fogelhaus.

Look, it's a sloth.

Kevin and Tia

March of the penguins.

Our fearless tour guide!

We had front rows seats of Animal Planet on HDTV. Okay not really, but we saw live and up close the monkeys humping and it was weird. I mean, I know that birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, but... it was really strange. because im just that type of girl, im gonna share the scene with you...there were 2 monkeys on a log and they would go at it. all the other monkeys watched, one tried to get in on the action, the girl monkey tried to run away and get with another monkey (who she was watching during the whole time she was copulating with the first monkey), and a 4th monkey tried to poke his head into the middle and see what was going on down there. and yet we all stood there and watched. ps i didnt wanna be too voyeuristic, the monkeys in the pic are just watching, not bumping nasties).

Tiger compoud.

Apparently you cant sue the zoo if you tease the tiger, it stalks you and then mangles you.

Tia's favorites were the elepants.

Tia found the donkey so adorable she kissed him. Germy, but cute.

The girls loved the petting zoo.

I know that pictures are worth a thousand words, but I always have an army of my own to add ... The Andersons choose not to use baby words to communicate going to the bathroom with their daughter. She is very adult in her vernacular. I'm sure it took lots of hard work and repetition to build up and understand and use the correct terminology. And in one visit to the zoo, the Parisi Family ruined EVERYTHING! Sorry Andersons! Just as the above picture was taken, little pellets shoot out and I shout shout 'EWWWW, watch out! it's making raisins!' and so of course Tia and Pia, point, laugh and repeat it over and over again. Which probably wouldnt be so bad, if not compounded by the story at the end of this entry.

When I told Pia that we were going to Germany she was so excited. For some reason we got on the subject of how it was colder there than in Italy and after that she was fixated that there were polar bears at Miss Tia's house.

The girls stood fascinated in front of the polar bears.

Grrrr! Wild Animals!

This is a picture of a beaver taking a dive. The zoo is set up in a way that most of the animals have their simulated natural environment outside. If they go in the water too, there is a glass area underneath where you can watch the animals swim and play. Or if they live underground in a cave, you can see that section too. The zoo was very thought out. (Altho there is the fact that there was very little seperating the people from the big cats - if you were stupid enough and wanted to dangle your arm in front of the jaguar, you could have. if you wanted to hop the fence and tease the tigers, you could do that too, very very easily. but remember you cant sue if something happens to you, so i guess people tend not to).

big pond with giant lily pads.

there was a picture of a toddler sitting on one of these and it stayed afloat!

Pink Flamingos

Miss Tia and Pia loved to run and chase each other.

Parisis and Andersons take on the Zoo.apologies in advanced to the protagonist of tonights bedtime story. it was the weekend and therefore fewer trains come and go. we had 3 trains to catch. we caught the first one, but there was a long wait for the second one (and kevin and michelle saw that there we would have very little time to catch the 3rd one). waiting in the train station wasnt so bad, it was all so clean and tidy. no beggars or stinky people. everyone respects personal space. we were all pretty pooped out. the girls especially, they had run around the zoo all day. by now, they sat in there strollers very quietly and were so good. little miss tia with her finger in her mouth was so adorable. finally, the 2nd train came. we got on, it was fairly empty, but having 2 strollers we stood near the empty space in front of the doors in towards back. (here is a bit of useless info...on the german metro, there is a little section in some trains for 'first class,' but there really isnt a difference between 1st and 2nd class. the seats the same but there is a piece of glass that seperates them. basically we were standing in front of that 1st class because no one was using it). we were all kind of quiet and staring of into space because we were so tired. then quiet and calmly, kevin starts pulling out jackets from under the stroller. a few seconds pass before he looks up, starts laughing and says "She said, 'Daddy, I went shi-shi.'" We were all cracking up. As for me, I dont know which was funnier the stream trickling towards our feet and down to first class or the fact that the Japanese word for pee has gone so international. Sorry Tia, I couldnt help it, I had to take a picture!

Tuckered Out

The girls were knackered! When we got home, theygot in their jammies, brushed their teeth,

and got immediately into bed and fell asleep! They were so sweet. Tia is such a lovely girl, she even gets Sophia to do the things she doesnt normally, like stay in bed!

Weiner Schnizel, Apparently Has Nothing To Do With Hot Dogs

Blurry picture of the brewery and band.
Too bad we werent able to get a picture of the guy dancing in lederhosen

tiki tiki tiki, hoy hoy hoy.
(the German version of when i say 'hey', you say 'ho')

The kids jump on the tables and sing and dance to their favorite songs. As the night goes on more and more people get up on the tables. This picture was taken early on. (to be honest, all the other tables that had little kids had already left and they were probably in bed. instead we forced the andersons into our italian habits of eating late and Tia and Pia were the only little ones left). I told Kevin if he and I were legally able to drink at 16, we'd probably be passed out under the tables, not on top of them!

Michelle and Tia lower their heads in prayer,
as they realize that Kevin has been possessed by Beer Demons.

...yet another family foto where Sophia looks at something in the distance.
(and from the looks of it, the demons were possessing Max too!)

Prost! (what a great picture of the people underneath the glasses, too bad we dont know them).

This is the real weiner schnizel. It is a breaded and fried veal cutlet and some french fries, typical pub grub. It was darn good! We joked that the lemon, sprig of parsley and ketchup must be considered veggies.

Okay here is tonight's bedtime story. As everyone knows, I don't like to drive in Italy! But being as how we were in Germany and max drank a beer the size of Sophia, I got handed the keys. Hooray! Except...the car is new, we got it just before Sophia and I went back to Cali and I couldn't figure out to how to adjust the seat. Apparently Max has long legs and short arms, the chair was pushed back as far as possible and the seat back was leaning forward as much as possible. I pulled up the seat as close to the steering wheel as possible, - apparently I have short legs and long arms, so I needed lean the seat back a little (which is the part i couldn't figure out how to do). There was a dial at the bottom of the seat, which i turned and turned , but it just made my butt go down and the legs tilt up towards the knees. As I pull out of the brewery drive way, Max has the brilliant idea to 'help' me, and he YANKS the handle which pulls the whole seat forward and backward. my feet no longer touch the pedals. I grunt, swear and mutter a very sarcastic thanks. Since the car is stick, the momentum of the car is going forward, it is all i can do to get the seat just barely close enough to touch the pedals again. We are in Germany, where there are only round-abouts and no stop signs -I'm trying to follow the Andersons and there are cars behind me. I never got the chance to correctly adjust the seat again. So I drove home with the seat pushing my back forward (my nose touching the steering wheel), my butt sunk low to the ground, my knees up to my chest and stretching my toes to touch the pedals...can we not have a normal experience?? even a short and simple drive always has to turn into a series of follies!