Christmas and more!

Christmas seems an awfully long time ago and we hardly have any photos as I filmed most of the festivities. Here's one of the few, with Amy wearing Luca's snowboots. Suffice it to say, the kids got truck loads of presents, the twins played more with the packaging than with their various dolls and stuffed animals and Manolo and I struggled to get to the end of the holidays without having a nervous breakdown!

This winter, we had more snow than we knew what to do with so big smiles all around. Predictably, Tanya took to toboganning like a duck to water whereas Amy preferred to watch from the sidelines for a while before she plucked up the courage to have a go too. Luca was in his element and spent many a happy afternoon going mad with the other kids in Tetto Piano.

Once again we went to see the International Balloon Meeting at Mondovi and once again, it was a stupendously sunny day with beautiful blue skies. This year I made triple sure that we had enough batteries for the camera and only had to stop filming for a while to delete old stuff from memory card which was full! 42 balloons took it in turns to lift off from the small park which was covered with snow. A great afternoon out until Luca threw one of his tantrums and cried most of the way home!

Luca's nursery school class emblem this year is a tortoise so I took that as my inspiration for his birthday cake. The "craze" this year, and Luca's passion, is "gormiti", creatures from the land of Gorm who battle against each other and come in various sizes, shapes and colours and ever-increasing prices, and not the easiest of things to turn into a cake!

Here's a picture of Luca in his tortoise costume during the school carnival procession.

For a long time I have wanted to take Luca to Turin and finally managed it on a very cold and rainy Sunday in March. We visited the Egyptian Museum, had several tram rides, saw the Po and walked our socks off! The best bit for me was the train ride back when Luca went into chat-mode. I'd thought he would have been exhausted and slept all the way home but instead he said "Let's pretend you've never seen 'The Lord of the Rings' and I'll tell you all about it". And he did! At home we rarely have the time to sit and have long chats so it was really lovely. The old couple who got on and sat next to us were totally enthralled, though when the lady tried to ask Luca a few questions in english he typically clammed up!

A typical sight in Luca's bedroom.

Amy and Tanya during one of several "flu" bouts

since Christmas.

Undoubtedly the biggest developement since our last post is that Amy is now talking, with a vocabulary that grows by the day! Her first words were "no!", "do!" (dog) and "ca!" (cat) followed not long after by "banana!", "bimba/o!" (girl/boy), "li!" (there), "quella/o" (that one) and "quaqua!" (acqua - water). The list goes on with "giu!" (down), "ciucio!" (dummy), "see!" (seat), "derdy!" (dirty), "tok!" (sock), "too!" (shoe), "weh!" (wet), "patata!" (potato) and "Io!" - short form of "arrivo!" which we yell when someone rings the bell. This week she started saying "Tanya" and "Luca" which is lovely!

Tanya remains the silent one though very enthusiastically says "ca!" for most animals and "tata!' when she sees or hears a tractor which happens fairly often around here!

The communication that goes on between the kids is most entertaining, especially when Luca talks to Amy asking her questions or trying to get her to do something. He still favours Tanya but appreciates and enjoys being with Amy more than he ever used to. And what a riot they all have playing together! Bouncing around on beds and throwing stuffed animals at each other are favourites, very often initiated by Luca about half an hour before the girls' bedtime (still 7pm - yippee! I love seeing Italian mothers' reactions when I say the twins go to bed at 7. "And what time do they sleep to?" "7" "And they don't wake up?" "Nope". They just don't believe it's possible for children to go to bed that early and not wake up in the night). And speaking of bedtimes, it's way past mine. Next post will be photos from Andrew, Sue, Chris and Gill's visit, hopefully done before the summer.