We had our little Christmas play at Family Home Evening on Monday. Tony had Axa do the casting. She cast herself as Mary, and Raj as Joseph. Raj’s baby doll Rachel (named after Benjamin’s fiancee) was baby Jesus. Grandma was the angel, and Grandpa was a wiseman. I was given the role of narrator. And Tony? He was a sheep. His costume was the best, though. He wore Raj’s special snuggly sheepskin. The play proceeded according to script until the sheep crawled in with Raj’s sheepskin laid over his back. Raj turned his back on Mary and the baby, climbed on top of the sheep, and began sucking his fingers and twirling Tony’s hair.… Read more
family
Chocolate Chip Pancakes
Blogging time’s been hard to come by lately. I don’t blog about our business, or I would have plenty to blog about. We’ve all been sick this week. However, we did go out to lunch yesterday with a lovely lady we met while campaigning for Proposition 8. Actually, we met her the day of the election. When we went to vote, we noticed that outside the polling location there were only people passing out flyers for No on Prop 8. Tony got in trouble at the polling place, because he wore his Yes on 8 T-shirt, and no biased material (including clothing) is allowed inside a polling place.… Read more
Why isn’t your three-year-old in school?
After I meet people here in Italy, their first question is usually, oh, so your three-year-old is starting preschool this year, right? No. Wrong. I smile, and say, “no, we do preschool at home.” And then, lest they imagine I am insulting them or Italy or (heaven forbid) the Italian school system, I usually add that we did preschool at home in the United States too.
The idea of waiting till a child is four to send him to school is bizarre enough to them. I do not find it necessary to give them a heart attack by adding that I plan not to send them to school until they go off to college.… Read more
San Diego
We’ve ditched the Italian schedule. No more dinners at 7:00. We need to get this family to bed at a reasonable time. Tony was thinking yesterday that most of our productive, happy family time is in the morning. Afternoon is for naps. So we’ve decided to lengthen the morning at the expense of the afternoon. Instead of having a three-hour morning and a seven-hour afternoon, we’ll have a five-hour morning and a five-hour afternoon, and spend some time in the afternoon doing things like tidying the house, setting out everyone’s clothes, and fixing a picnic lunch for the next day.
For the past year or so (since our second child was born, coincidentally enough), we’ve had something of a schedule fetish.… Read more
Nature Study
Yesterday we biked out to a nice little meadow we spotted some distance away from the road. Charlotte Mason’s idea of nature study has begun to make an impression on me. At first, I only pretended to be interested in the insects and view them as sweet, delicate little creatures. But I have begun to develop a real appreciation and even affection for them. Which is good, since the long summer grass is full of them. We saw several varieties of grasshoppers, a big black beetle, a small white bug with five black stripes on its back, each apparently ending at an eye (maybe some were decoys?),… Read more
Bicycles
Yesterday we biked up to Certosa di Pesio, a 12th century monastary high in the Alps. It took us an hour and a half, since it’s uphill all the way. I think it’s nine kilometers from here. It was only half an hour back. We stopped when we arrived at a pretty little picnic spot near the river. The Pesio River is beautiful up there–full of moss-covered rocks. We saw several lovely pools one might swim in (although even in August it’s none to hot up there).
We also saw a deer on the way up. It watched us ride by and then went back to trimming weeds.… Read more
More Sentimentality
Every day while Tony was gone, we each wrote memories of each other to share when we got back. Here are mine:
I remember being newlyweds at Villa Maria. You carried me out and spun around with me in the rain. We took long walks in the afternoon, talking about our feelings and getting to know one another. We got memberships at Gold’s Gym, and we used to sit on the edge of the jacuzzi and talk. On Valentine’s Day, we shopped for clothes at D.I., and then went to Tucano’s for dinner. You asked me what color of roses I wanted 🙂
We drove out to San Diego for our first Thanksgiving after we were married.… Read more
The Plague has Struck
We have chicken pox! Or more accurately, Axa has it. But I’m sure Raj is soon to follow. Luckily, he’s been guzzling plenty of breastmilk, which I’m sure is full of appropriately useful antibodies.
I can’t say I’m very upset about it. In fact, I’m quite happy. I had chicken pox at sixteen, and would have much preferred to contract it at three. She doesn’t even seem terribly uncomfortable. No fever, and she’s doing a stellar job at not scratching. Poor girl, she’s had a fair amount of practice with eczema. We’re also re-using her special shirts with sewed-up sleeves to help her not scratch in her sleep.… Read more
Romantic Interlude
I’m home alone for the week (well, alone with my little bobbles). Tony is camping with the Boy Scouts. It’s strange to be missing my other half. Neither of us works outside our home, nor do we have many other separate activities. We mostly spend all day every day together. He works some on the computer, and I cook or blog or nurse children to sleep, but we’re rarely more than a room away from one another.
I’m sorry if this entry turns out a bit sappy. I can feel it heading in that direction. You can stop reading now if you can’t stand kissing scenes, and come back on a different day when I feel like ranting about bureaocracy or describing my latest encounter with raw milk.… Read more
Mother’s Day
It’s a beautiful morning, but my poor little baby is sick. He had a fever in the night, and was throwing up this morning. He’s so sweet, though. He smiles and wants to snuggle, even right after he throws up.
It has been four years since I became a mother. I date it from the time I first got pregnant, because that’s when I began to feel like one. I think about being pregnant sometimes. My baby will be a year next month. Not old enough for most people to think about having another, although some people already have another by now.… Read more