Isabel is smiling

This last week this little girl has woken up. She is wanting to see everything that's going on around her. She's also starting smiling and cooing like you wouldn't believe! I never thought that such a cute smile would be a problem, but today for all of her breast feedings, towards the end of the feeding she ends up looking at me and smiling instead of eating. Oh well. I'm in love with that smile. Thanks for being so cute Isabel!

Aaron is convinced that this is his very fashionable hat. I think it's used in collecting grapes from the vineyard at the end of the season, but not quite sure about that. I think he looks like a chinese worker in the rice fields. :)
And here's that great smiling!

Pictures of the house

I've been waiting for my house to be clean, all my things to be put away, for a sunny day to have good lighting to take pictures of my house. Since that's not realistically going to happen all on the same day I decided to take some pictures (some are even out of focus) and post them anyway. So here's the entrance.
If you look to the right you see kitchen/living room.
This is looking at the living room from the kitchen.
And looking at the kitchen from the living room.
From the living room looking at the front door.
This is my bedroom.
This is the bathroom in my bedroom.
Paolo's brother and uncle had it built right before we came. Way nice of them!
This is the other bedroom (for the kids).
This is the main bathroom. The very short film below I tried to video our house but ran out of space on our card.

Sleeping through the night

I hope I'm not cursing myself by posting about this. Isabel has slept through the night for the last 3 nights in a row. I'm hoping that this is a habit that continues. She goes to sleep around 10 p.m. and then I wake up 5-6 a.m. because I'm so full of milk that I can't sleep anymore. I feed her and she goes back to sleep for another 2 hours. My boys have also not gotten up during the night either for the last 3 nights- just up really early in the morning. I can handle that though.

I've had a melancholy 2 days where I'm missing home, family, and friends. I think those kinds of days are normal though.

Rainy Days and Gelato

Peas in a pod. I did rescue Isabel from getting smashed right after taking the picture.
Walking to the park and eating bread. There's a decent park about 1 mile from our house (there is one closer but doesn't have much other than old people who smoke around my kids).
This is my first time ever trying to make a ruffle. It turned out really well. I made a double-sided apron. The great part is that I used it from spare fabric I had, and it turned out much cuter than I thought it would. That always makes you feel good.

Aaron was my model. I didn't take the picture while Paolo was home, just in case he had a heart attack over his son wearing something rather girly.


Yesterday it rained ALL day long. So we stayed in the house all day. To prevent myself from going crazy I decided to do a sewing project. I've been reading a book my friend Kati gave me that has patterns for some adorable girls clothes. I've never done frills and girly stuff and I've been dying to try. We have a friend who is turning 4 next week, so I decided I could experiment on a present for her. Pictures are to follow.

I had my first gelato the other day. I promised my friend Karla that I'd get an extra scoop. I did, and I'm glad I did. My brother-in-law watched the boys while Paolo and I took Isabel and got an ice cream. I got dark chocolate (it was almost too dark and Paolo had to finish it for me), white chocolate, and hazelnut. Yum!

Chocolate, guilt free goodness

So I've been up until 1-3 a.m. with Isabel and not been able to sew (makes too much noise for our tiny place). So I took to browsing my recipes. I found a weight watchers recipe that I modified. It's worth trying and making! I've modified it to fit my ingredients that are available. The recipe makes about 15 cookies, so if you end up eating the whole batch, you don't even need to feel bad about it. Here's the recipe.

• 1 plum grated (1/3 c. prunes pureéd)
• 1 apple grated (1/3 c. applesauce)
• 1/3 cup chestnut puree (i recommend grating another apple or a pear)
• 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
• 2 tbsp. sugar
• 2 tbsp. water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 c. dark chocolate chips (or semi-sweet)
• 1/2 c. flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder

Grate your fruit. I recommend fresh fruit grated but you can substitute. In a microwave container heat the sugar/cocoa/water/vanilla until sugar is melted. Then throw that in the microwave. Heat in 10 second intervals until choc. chips are melted. Mix chocolate goodness into the grated fruit. Then add flour and baking powder. Cook approx. 10 mins at 350 degrees. Makes about 15 cookies. It's very dark chocolate tasting. I'm not a huge fan of dark chocolate but really like these. If you need good stress eating food I recommend these. You won't even feel guilty about it!

So we live on a little private street. Here's the gate going into where we live. We live at the end on the right hand side.

Here's the little vineyard of our neighbors as you walk down our street.
Here's the entrance to the house/apartment where we're living now.

When my kids saw this car they said "it's uncle topolino!" (from the movie Cars 2). They wanted their picture taken with him. Disney has definitely got my boys hooked on Cars.
As I was talking to a very dear friend (thank you Karla for knowing that I needed a phone call) my kids were watching TV just before bed. They were (for the first time today) so cute. The boys were caressing Isabel and being so sweet!
I'm grateful for those rare, sweet moments when the best shines through!

Made it alive

I don't have any pictures to post since I haven't taken any yet. I promise there will be some soon.

We survived our 24 hour travel period in relatively good condition. Jordan only had a few melt'downs, and Aaron none. Isabel was an angel as always. Granted she's only 2 months old so I'll give her a little time to catch up to her brothers.

I'm wondering if my eyes will ever not be red. They're blood-shot from not sleeping, and were red from crying before I left. One day someone may see that I do have white in my eyes.

The kids are feeling the time difference and so are we. It still feels surreal to me that I live in Italy now. Both Paolo and I are having culture shock!

On a good note, I have two fun things. One is that I forgot about the mozzarella cheese, yum! Just bought some tonight.

The second, is that from the day my first child was born I've thought it would be funny if one of my boys innocent peed on my husband. My brother's oldest child was a fountain whenever he got his diaper changed. I thought it would be funny if the same thing happened to Paolo. Neither of the boys came through for me though- that is until tonight. Jet-lagged and exhausted Jordan fell asleep in Paolo's arms while talking to the neighbor. Paolo came in holding Jordan passed out on his shoulder. We were discussing what to do with him- try to put him to bed like that or change him into his PJ's. I was just expressing my concern that he might wet the bed and we better wake him up to go to the bathroom, when Jordan finally came through for me. He "wet the bed" while Paolo was holding him! I needed a good laugh after all the stress and tiredness we've had. Thank you Jordan for making mommy's dreams come true. :)

Terrorist Attack

I was having for one of those long wished for moments of your children "playing nice and quietly" down stairs (my kids haven't very many of those moments lately). So I ran upstairs to make a phone call to get ready to move and wash the dishes. As I'm finishing the dishes I turn around and see thread on my kitchen floor. Ominous sign since thread is found only in my sewing room downstairs.

Then I see innocent Jordan (aka terrorist #1) stroll by. I asked him where he got the thread from. He answered down stairs. So I asked him to show me. There is thread strung from the kitchen upstairs, all the way down both flights of stairs, and into my sewing room.

That's when we came upon Aaron (aka terrorist #2) in the sewing room. And this is what I found!

(Sorry about the sideways picture. I down loaded it from my camera and it didn't let me turn it the right way).
They had pulled off every single key from my keyboard on the laptop that we're taking with us to Italy. I was aghast and didn't know what to say. So I sent both boys to their rooms to re-group for a moment.
I then took them back down stairs and showed them what they had done. I explained to them that they had broken mommy's computer and how sad it made me. Aaron just looked at me and said "oh sorry mom" in a tone that clearly sounded like he was totally surprised that his little treat had made me sad (along with annoyed, frustrated....). It was clear to me that they didn't have a clue that they had done something wrong.

Punishment: TV ban for the day (not that they get much of it anyway)
I guess they can make up for it when they smile at you like this.

On a good note, a nice neighbor is coming by tonight to see if he can help reattach those keys. He informs me that I can buy a new keyboard and have it put on for relatively cheap if he's not successful.