Recovery

We've been back in Davis for a just under a week, and it's so nice to be back.  The trip home was uneventful, in the sense that the kids behaved, the flights were smooth and on time, and there were no national strikes or natural disasters.  I did not fare well, however, which is fairly typical for me, since I generally can't sleep on planes and 22 hours is a long time to stay awake while eating crappy food, not drinking enough water, and having to constantly monitor two munchkins.  Halfway through our longer flight from Munich to San Francisco, I developed searing headache that didn't go away until several hours after we got home.  That was followed by about 5 days and nights of jetlag that our kids just couldn't seem to adjust to.  It was rough.  I was in a complete daze, and didn't manage to unpack until yesterday.

Now things are nice.  The kids are happy to be home and have their old toys back.  I am happy to be home and have my garden and my house back.  I spent today out with the kids running errands, and worked in the garden while they slept, then went for a run and had a nice shower.  We cooked a yummy dinner.  Now I should probably be cleaning litterboxes and picking up toys and folding laundry and sorting mail, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Yesterday we went to the library, after two months of not having access to one.

Everyone was thrilled.  Turtle begged for Thomas the Train books, since he remembered that we used to get them there, and we had to have a librarian go dig some up for us, since another mom had taken all the ones available on the shelf.  We also got a few Richard Scarry and Berenstein Bears books, our other new favorites.

Today I worked in the garden, and it was sunny and glorious and awesome.  Even if it's too early to plant much, I'm taking advantage of my enthusiasm and trying to get as much done as possible before I run out of steam.  I planted some lettuce under our beanpole teepee, which will get some super-long climbing green beans later in the spring.

This is where the tomatoes were, which I pulled out today.  I should have waited to take the pictures until AFTER I leveled this plot and planted a few spinach plants in the corner, but oh well.

And here are some of the leeks I planted last spring.  They didn't do much last summer, but they look great now!

I also have some bush shelling peas germinating on the counter, and I prepped some 6-packs to start more lettuce in, but then the kids woke up from their nap, so that will wait until tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning we will go visit our Montessori preschool for a while.  I'm super nervous about leaving the kids there since they've become MUCH more attached to me.  While they've never been the type to run away from me without looking back, they have become much more nervous about letting me out of their sight.  Possibly two transatlantic flights plus two months in a foreign country away from their home and schedule will do that to a two-year-old.  Sigh.  Poor babies.

Tomorrow is another day, though - more housework, more gardening, definitely not more running just yet!

Winter turns to spring

It's technically not that close to the end of winter, we still have over a month to go (I guess that means that we're only a little over halfway through), but I really love the tail end of winter.  Here in the mountains in Italy, we have longer days with more sunshine, which for a Californian like me is really important.  Late winter and early spring skiing are really nice, with days that are often warm enough for cross-country in just a long-sleeve shirt.

Yesterday we drove to Pra-Loup in France for a full day of downhill skiing, something we don't get to do much of since our little ones arrived.  It was a beautiful day, cold enough for the snow to stay nice and solid, but not so cold that you suffer from it.  Lunch on a sunny deck halfway up the mountain was a special treat, as were the excellently groomed runs.  Driving home involved a climb up a windy road to the Colle della Maddalena, with a 360 view of the snow-capped peaks of the Alps in the late afternoon sun, and as I admired the landscape, I thought with a bit of sadness about our impending return to California.  Even with all the fun and activities that await us, one of the big things I will miss here is the view, the mountains, the fresh air and wilderness just outside our door.

We have been here for two months, and I am ready to go home.  I'm ready to start planting some seeds for my garden, growing some lettuce for fresh salads, shopping at the local Farmer's Market, having lunch at the co-op, baking bread, running and hiking and maybe even some skiing up in the Sierras.  We'll see what the future holds, but mostly I'm looking forward to spring.  To the first Easter that my kids will really understand the idea of hunting Easter eggs.  To really getting out in nature with them, checking out flowers, planting seeds, watering the garden, digging in the dirt, and running in the grass.  To longer days, sunshine, and eventually short sleeves and sandals.  To the Whole Earth Festival!  To throwing open the windows, and cleaning and organizing my house (thanks pinterest!).  It's going to be a good spring, I can feel it.

And I know that before I get there, I've got to say good-bye to everyone here, pack up our bags, and transport our whole family including two toddlers from Italy to California - two flights, two car trips, one layover, two trips through security, immigration, and customs ... I'm a bit tired just thinking about it.

Perhaps it's best to think instead of the very short term - a lovely family lunch tomorrow at Gli Allemands, where my in-laws have a vacation home on a wooded mountainside a couple miles outside of town.  It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day, and for that I am thankful.

Life and death in a small town in the Italian Alps

This morning was beautiful.  Now that we are halfway through February, the sun climbs above the mountains by 9:30 in the morning, and the sky was clear and blue.  After playing inside for a while, Tadpole, Turtle, and I bundled up and walked across the plaza and into the heart of the village to the panetteria to get our typical mid-morning snack of focaccia from the local baker.  Tadpole is completely addicted to this focaccia - I have to remember to go buy a few slices the morning we leave so she can eat them on the plane.



My father-in-law joined us on our walk, and we rounded the corner and headed up to the ancient stone church to fulfill Turtle's regular request to see the bell tower.  We walked hand-in-hand up the cobblestone streets, pausing in one lane to greet a 3-year-old friend on her way to preschool with her grandmother.  Near the top of the hill, a thin coating of ice and snow still covered the street, leftover from the storm we had on Monday.



We turned left and made the final ascent to the church, which is tucked inside the stone wall of the town, very near the highest point in town.  We admired the bell tower, checked out the thick ice sculptures created by the rushing water of the fountain, and exclaimed over the length of the icicles hanging from the walls of the fort (they were impressively long).  Since we were there at 10:30, we thought there was no chance to hear the bells ring for at least a half hour, but it turned out we were wrong.  An ancient woman was making her way to the church, and told my father-in-law, in the local dialect, that she was on her way to have the bells ring to signify the birth of a new child in town.



The bells of the church here have three different chimes that signify the passing of time, in cycles both small and large.  The small cycle is the hourly one - the bells chime out the hours around the clock, and also toll for a while at 7am (I'm not sure if this is a call to services ...).  Then there is a certain type of ring for births, and another for deaths, tolling the cycles of time on the scale of a human life.  This town has a retirement home, which has residents from all over the valley, particularly from the upper valley which has towns much less populated and no resources for the very ancient.  And many of the young people have left this place to look for work and opportunities for their families, so the average age here, I suspect, is quite high.



Since we've arrived, two months ago, there have been at least 5 or 6 funerals, and probably more that I wasn't aware of.  One of the funerals was for the mother of the baker whose bakery we visited this morning, as we do most mornings.  I often don't know the people who pass away while we are here, or I know of them only because I know some distant relative who is a friend or relative of my husband.  I didn't go to the funeral, but I happened to come upon the funeral procession as I was coming home from one of my regular walks in the mountains above the town.



Funerals here are very different from anything I've experienced in the US, although I know that part of it is because this is a small town and everyone knows everyone else.  Since this woman was one of the people who run the town bakery, she was very well known, and people came from all over for her funeral.  I'm not sure I've ever seen such a big gathering of people in this town before.  After the funeral, which is held at the town church we walked to this morning, the people form a procession and accompany the hearse down to the cemetery, which is located at one of the lowest points in town, not far from the river that snakes along the bottom of this valley.  There was a policewoman who stopped traffic on the main state road between Italy and France, and the bells of the church tolled.



At the time (this was a couple weeks ago), I thought about how perhaps in some ways this ceremony could make death less scary and easier to accept.  To know that at the end of your life, everyone you knew would show up for your funeral and accompany you through your hometown to your final resting place, within the walls of the place you thought of as home for most of your life, and to know you would remain there, most likely with all the people you knew in life - somehow it made death feel less lonely to me.



And then today, I realized that the same woman probably had those very same church bells ring when she was born some 70 years ago.  That those bells rang for my husband when he was born, and I think also for my children (thanks to my mother-in-law) when they were born two and a half years ago.  I thought about how I have nothing like that - no ties to any place on earth.  My mom is from Pennsylvania, my dad from Kentucky, and I don't even know if their parents were from the same towns they were from.  I grew up in one town in California, then we moved to another, and then I went to two different universities and have never felt connected to anyplace.  What an amazing thing to have an entire community so tied together, to be a part of something bigger than yourself, but still human in scale.



I am not completely ignorant, though.  I know that there are down sides to living in a town like this, and I've experienced them this winter.  It can be lonely here, and the winters are cold and dark.  There is little work to be found here, and people are leaving, the population is gradually dwindling.  The shops and cafes and restaurants are closing, there are very few left, and as a result, there is not much to do here.



But hearing the church bells ring, today for a birth, several times over the last few months for deaths, helped me realize that there is something here worth having, as well.  Seeing my children surrounded by a huge extended family that dotes on them, hearing the entire town greet them by name when they are downstairs in my in-laws' shop, makes me wonder if we are giving up something that is more valuable than we are gaining, when we leave our families and our hometowns in the name of opportunity and independence.  It's hard for me to say, really, not having grown up in a place like this.  Still, I think it's some good food for thought.



(P.S. I'm sorry I don't have pictures, if I can I'll try to add some later.)

Play houses and barn!

So I am too excited not to post these now, even though they're not quite done!  I don't think I'll have a good photography chance after I finish them because they'll shortly be going as gifts to my kids and one of their friends and they'll be well-loved (I hope) and no longer in pristine condition.  I found this blog here, which led me to the tutorial here.  If you are interested in doing this, check out the flickr site with all the uploaded photos of people's projects.  So now I present the projects I've been laboring over for weeks and weeks.

This one is a gift for my good friend's daughter, who just turned 2:

Here is a view from the end, with the shutter detailing:

Those tabs you see are velcro, and when you undo them, you can open up the house to play inside:

I got her a little L.alalo.opsy doll with a sleeping bag to play in the house.  I've actually never heard of these before, but I thought they were much cuter than the traditional b.arb.ie or di.sney princess dolls.

This is the barn I made for my kids.  It still needs some work, but from this view it's essentially finished:

From this view, it's not finished.  I glued on that beehive, but I need to sew on the little bee buttons that came with it:

Inside, there is a vegetable garden, a fence, and a pond, plus some animals.  I also ordered a few mini wooden tractors from etsy, but they haven't arrived yet:

And this house is for my kids, too.  It's definitely not done yet.  The front needs a little something more.  And I need to finish the fence.

The back is mostly done.  I would like to string a laundry line with mini-clothespins between the trees, but that won't happen for a while yet.  I also have ladybug and flower beads to add to all sides:

 And the inside.  Still needs work as well.  I made that little wooden bed with a mattress, blanket, and pillow.  I've also found some neat furniture online (including this), but haven't decided on anything yet.  My husband thinks I should have a little bathtub, but I'm not totally sure how to do that yet. I would totally take suggestions for what to put in the house as well as outside on the grass.

I did make a few changes to the pattern, obviously.  The original pattern called for sewing up two sides of the house and using a button with elastic to secure the other two sides.  I wanted to be able to completely flatten the house for easy portability (i.e. the ability to pack it in a suitcase), so I left it all open.  However, this led the problem that it was too floppy to stand up just using a button and elastics, so I ended up using velcro tabs.  I also made the barn with a three-part roof instead of a two-part roof.

So there you go - Christmas gifts 2012!

What Christmas gifts are you giving this year?

Cozy

Today it is pouring rain and Tadpole woke up with a fever and Turtle with a harsh cough like a barking seal. After a bit of children's tylenol for Tadpole and some homeopathic cough syrup for Turtle, we all had a nice morning in our jammies.

One thing that I love about my kids is that they love to read, just like me.  Turtle usually protests having to leave the library, and as soon as I mention going home he starts frantically pulling books off shelves and flipping through them madly, as if he's trying to read as many as possible before I insist that we go.  The best way of getting him out is to tell him he can use the self-checkout machine, and our library is nice because they have a nice low one that is perfect for little kids.

While we have books in our living room and in each of the kids' rooms, one of my favorite spots to sit and read with them is this cozy little nook my sister designed when she drew up our renovation plans.  It's a beautiful floating wood bench, with baskets underneath, bookshelves on one side and a lovely window onto the backyard.  Our contractor stupidly planned things so that there is an electrical panel on the wall opposite the bookshelf, but luckily it is just high enough not to be annoying when sitting and reading, and it is covered by that lovely tapestry from Peru that my husband and I bought at a fair trade store not long after we moved in together - it might just be our first decorative purchase for our life together.

Here is a pic of the kids looking at the rain, which was really coming down at that point:



Here is the view towards the bookshelf - this shelf holds two baskets at the bottom and then holds a shelf of toddler books, my French novels, older kid books that I still have from my childhood, and at the top are some of our books that we don't need easily at hand.

And this is the view towards the Peruvian tapestry.  A nice cozy little corner on a rainy day!

We don't have a window seat cushion, partly because the only place in town I got a quote from was staggeringly expensive, so I folded up an extra comforter and covered it with a quilt that has matching pillowcases, which makes for a nice comfy place to relax.

I hope you are enjoying this day, too!

Travel felt boards

I made these travel felt mats for my kids and my nieces and nephews for Christmas.  They are super easy to make, and if you're making more than one, they're even faster to make assembly line style (i.e. do all cutting first, then all ironing, etc.  The only part that gets to feel like drudgery is cutting out the million little felt pieces.  I found the travel felt mat tutorial here, and got more ideas for little pieces to play with here.

I'm hoping these will be another great toy for our trip to Italy.  Here are some pictures of the mats that I made, including some ideas of my own:

I made 5 mats, 2 for girls and 3 for boys.  In the future, I would not make them so gender-specific, probably, and I also would use a blue felt background for all of them.  It makes for a more realistic background, and the other pieces look better and are easier to see because it's more contrast.

Here is a little dress-up person with some clothes.  I still want to do a few more clothes, including some dresses.  I've found patterns for making these people and their clothes on various sites and blogs, but I actually made these myself:

Butterflies - I'll probably cute out a few more body pieces.  I got this idea from the second link above.

Here are a few trees, plus some weather pieces, which are always useful to throw in for use with various other pieces and scenes.  I also have stars and a moon, which I didn't picture here.

Another tree and some flowers.  Would like to do more of these.

Houses!  These can be a lot more creative and fun, but I made these a while ago when my kids were pretty little, so I just did the basics.  You could also make other buildings like a church or a store or a school.

Cars and other vehicles!  I could get a lot more creative with these now, too.  Nothing is glued together here, the kids have to assemble the cars themselves, but if I made something more elaborate (like the tractors that Turtle is currently obsessed with) I'd probably have some pieces be fixed.  And see what I mean about the weather pieces being useful?

Pizza!  I've actually made a whole variety of fruit and vegetable pieces for our big feltboard, but I don't know how much fun they'd be for travel play:

And there you have it!  A nice mix of ideas from the internet plus my own ideas.  Have fun!  And let me know if you have other ideas, too, I'm always looking for more.

CIO -----> tentative bedtime truce

So, we only did CIO for one night, and it was pretty awful, but we were really going crazy with the sleep situation.  I always thought that once you get your kid to sleep through the night, that was it!  I mean, sure, there would be the occasional nightmare or request for water, but I was totally clueless about sleep regression and climbing out of the crib and so on. 

In our case, Turtle knows how to fall asleep without help, he just didn't want to go to sleep in his room alone.  We weren't able to get him to tell us what the problem was, so we couldn't try solving whatever it was that was scaring him or making him not want to go to bed.  Staying with him solved that problem, but created a new one: having someone in the room with him was making him too excited to sleep.  We even tried putting Tadpole in there in a portable crib - it didn't help at all, and prevented Tadpole from sleeping, too.

Based on a similar situation a friend had with her son one year ago, we decided to put a chair just outside Turtle's room.  My husband would get his computer and sit in the chair, show Turtle that he was there working, then close the door most of the way.  It worked!  And for the moment, it's still working.  Turtle has the comfort of knowing someone is there without the distraction of having someone to play with inside his room.  Now, we'll just cross our fingers that it keeps working.