Occupying the Vacation days

This year the Christmas breaks seems extra long, it's about 3 weeks (also because we had that snow day right before the break). Sophia's imagination has been running overtime and she really likes to act out things with her dolls. She also loves doing puppet shows. We don't have too many, so I decided we should make some. Turns out it is a longer more detailed process than I imagined, esp when someone slapped on 2 pieces of paper mache and decided she didnt want to get her hands dirty. Well, at least painting doesnt get you too dirty and she enjoyed doing that:

And after that she decided she needed some glasses:

and Dad did too:

The story of Rudolf in 8 pages

This summer my friend Karen introduced us to bare books. It is such a great find. The idea behind it is sooo simple, but genius! They are just blank books that kids write their own stories/illustrate in. We did our first one this summer at the Gran's house. Now Sophia likes to do books all the time. Unfortunately we don't have any more bare books left, hence the computer printer paper style book. Why waste 45 minutes watching that old stop motion movie Rudolf? You can see it here in 8 pages:









ps yeah i know some of the drawings are mine, altho its hard to tell. usually she does the whole book by herself, but this time she wanted help. i'm looking for other books to stick up here where its just her stuff, but this was the first one on hand.

Casetta di Terra

One of the dads is an architect. During his travels he went to india and learned how to construct a typical mud hut. This year, they organized all the kids, parents and teachers and in a week brought in all the materials and constructed this hut in the playground at the school:Miss Milena and Bianca get down and dirty!

Soph's dirty little feet
(or as she likes to say all too often PIEDI PUZZOLENTI!)

group washdown!

The hut was actually built in may but I didnt get a chance to snap a picture of it the finished product. I guess I'll have to do that today! I didnt get to help build the hut, because i was busy making all the hats, so Bianca's mom was so sweet and gave me all the pictures. She also gave me a bunch from the school recital and Sophia's bday! Bianca 'graduates' this year and I am really going to miss her and her family. We were very fortunate to find this school, it is not typical that parents are so involved and organize so many things both curricular and extra curricular.

Sophia's Scribbles

Its amazing how much motor control sophia has:

i think she said this is supposed to be a bunny.

End of the Christmas Break

...and back to school for Pia. We also went to visit her Scuola Materna (which is like the next level of school from ages 3-5) that's part of her school. OMG it is such a sad little area and the teachers are a bit old - not just in age but in action. They arent lively and young at heart, they are all grandma-ish. It's the neighborhood school and the school thats closest so her friends will be there. But i think we are gonna check out at least one more school to see what it's like. It's so hard to send Pia to Boccaccio (our school) after seeing what a nice school Gingerbread was (where chan, ian and lucas went/go). I know i shouldnt compare. It makes me want to go back to the States for Pia's sake!! Maybe it wont be so bad, i mean it's just preschool, so maybe it wont be so bad, but you know i really want her to get off to a good start.
It's still dark early and cold and damp and foggy so Max went to go get Pia and they fingerpainted with a new set of paints that ML and F gave to her for xmas.

Digital Camera's Will Be Our Downfall

Martina gave Sophia a Play-dough set (here its called dido - pronounced like dee-doe not like the singer, which rhymes with fido) for Christmas. We broke out with that today too! Sophia watched so much TV between me trying to keep up on the jewelry making and either she or I being sick all Dec, I am more than happy that she does ANYTHING aside sit in front of the boob-tube! (altho i must say that her spanish has improved loads- she says empujen, abajo, arriba, lo hicimos and can count to 10!) Anyways we all had a lot of fun with it, perhaps max and i had more fun than our daughter!

Escaped Pyscho Killer

Actually this one isnt much different from real life.

Nor is this one if forget to wax!

Why pay all that money for bee-stung lips, just break out with the play dough!

yeah, again not much diff from reality...

And you know we would not be documenting this kind of stuff if we didnt have a digital camera. I used to be so chinsey with the film sometimes i'd have a roll in my camera for years, now look at us!

Safari Stamps

Holber and Gweta gave Pia some stamps with a safari theme.
I think Pia looks a lot like AuntieChell, its the pouty mouth and poofy hair!


I ended up doing all the stamping and having all the fun, and she just did a puppet show with the caps.

Max or Monkey

This morning Sophia was watching Curious George and she decided to draw a monkey:
We think it looks like Max, but then again besides opposable thumbs, is there really much of a difference?

Miss Sophia

The good news is, for three days in a row Sophia has gone to bed by herself without getting out of the crib 10 million times. It's been so fabulous, for the last month or so its been a losing battle getting her to go to bed. We've tried all the techniques in the book, not even Super Nanny was helping this time! The bad news is Sophia has been ill for 2 of the three days (fever, cough etc) so we're not sure if it's the new technique, she has grown out of the bedtime battle stage or we just got lucky because she is ill.

I dont know if its the fever or what...but a little Michelangelo is expressing itself thru Sophia! She has been drawing up a storm lately, and not just scribbles. She did flowers, that actually look like flowers! She's done a car, celery, a potato - but they are always on the etch-a-sketch thing so there has never been any proof of her genius...so I took a picture! Im so proud of my litle artist!

PicasSophia

Today is a half day, but since the kids cant go back until 1pm and ive got to pick Soph up by 4, we just stayed home. Nasty cold, luckily Max took care of her in the morning, but he had to go to work by 10 and of course the dang Little Einsteins avi got blocked so as soon as he went out the door I had to get up and fix it. After a little tv (and coffee for me) we got dressed and got out the pencils and drew on the paintings we did yesterday. That was pretty fun, but didnt last too long. But it looked so nice, i was inspired to let Sophia acrylic paint and see what came out of it...un piéce di resistence (or however you spell it...you'd think after all those years of art in college, i'd know). I also learned a valuable lesson, dont use tuna cans to hold the paint, i was rinsing one out and i cut the heck out of my stupid finger, and it wouldnt stop bleeding. Better me than Soph, the cut's pretty deep so it would have cut her whole finger off......ewwww! Anyways, quite proud of my kid, too bad we dont have anywhere to hang it...maybe we can make some space over the book shelves. Too bad we didnt work in yellow and red and orange it would have matched the walls in the living room!

Fooled Nights Sleep

I can't believe it! Sophia actually slept the whole dang night...about 3am I woke up, (force of habit, nervously awaiting to see if she would wake up). She did a little cough, moved around a little bit and I held my breath in anticipation, but nope...she just stayed sleeping. Unfortunately about 3am Max woke up too, coughing and nose blowing. Poor guy's cold was just worse. But worse yet, poor me...I am doomed to never have a full nights sleep. What a friggin psych was that, he tossed and turned and made so much noise I got up and went on the couch and read. It wasnt even a good reading book (one of those parent help books, requires too much concentration). Don't know what time i finally fell asleep but I do know Soph rolled in around 6.30ish - 'Miiiiilk'.
Max was good and he took her school. Due to yesterdays over work I decided that today i would just hang around the house, watch some well deserved tv (that isnt the wonder pets or little einsteins) and veg. yeah i say that, but of course the cooking, cleaning and laundry still get done at random intervals...no im not sure how much hanging out i actually did do. took a nap, which was well needed, and luckily Max went to go and pick up Sophia from school. I guess she had a hard day and cried a lot and asked for us. Poor kid, she jumped right onto the bed and started pawing at my hair. And since it was the late shift for Max he was off to work.
I usually hate early morning shifts and late shifts, it makes my day all that much longer. But today went pretty well. We just hung out, Soph 'helped' me clean and put away laundry, and then she was shouting something that sounded like 'shark week' that I totally didnt get, and of course she was so insistent and kept shouting it over and over, I felt like the idiot for not understanding her, so I changed subjects and got out the painting kit that Pietro gave her for her b-day. I was trying to save it so that they could play it together but oh well. Its one of those imaginarium kits, the paints are already in the brushes, all you need to do is wet them and paint the posters that they give you, and there is even a little plastic mat included.
She was so into it she must have painted for an hour and a half. I kept getting out big ol' sheets from the Ikea roll to keep her going. That was cool, it gave me a little break and Marc and I just pinged for that time. And then it got late, it was getting dark and cool so we came inside and had a bath. She even sat on the toilet for a minute.
All was good and dandy until dinner time....I warmed up the chicken noodle soup from lunch and as per norm this week, she didnt want to sit down and eat dinner. First she spit at me - so a time out. And then she insisted that I open the mini twix or 2 cookies she got from school. Coercion, bribery, flat out threats made no difference - that girl was not even gonna sit in her chair and just taste to see if she liked the soup or not. So back into time out it was. No change, so back into time out. This time it actually worked and she sat down and tried some soup. I scooped the first spoonful, trying to just get noodles or chicken. But she shouted - se-woo-weee. I didnt get it at first, but apparently she wanted to eat the celery! where the heck did she learn that from, could it be? nooo...does something good actually come out of the wonder pets- lets celery-brate! yeahhh! thanks linnie, tuck and ming ming too! its the first time i didnt hate them! she ate a few spoonfuls, which was fine, and then i opened the twix as afore promised. And then I was going to offer up some tv, but she wanted to draw. so she drew, and then started drumming with the pencils. and then she started to take song requests (from herself)...gwen stefani - this mmms bananas b-a-ayananas, twinkle. and then she started demanding songs from me shake your bootie, bah bah black sheep. strange line up of karaoke but it was fun, and funny! but then she started singing wonder pets, which brought us back to tv again, so i let her watch for an hour and then it was off to bed...which btw was also really easy, i tucked her in, sang a song and lights out. she cried a little, but before msn msgr opened up, she was quiet.
got 5 pages of scrap booking this some of this summer's pix done. only about 80 more pages to go!!! so this is the goal, a couple of pages every night (yeah right) but thats 2-4 pix per page, so if i do keep it up, i could actually get a lot done! yeah we will see, this thing is dated right, i will come back and look at my progress, if i even remember that i set the goal.