Gioco simbolico

Last week at Dylan's play group, they opened up a new room that is usually reserved for the older kids. It's one of the rooms they will play in starting in the fall, but the teachers wanted to see how the kids would react now that they are all a bit older. The room is for the "gioco simbolico" (like play acting, I guess) and it has a lot of toys as well as a miniature kitchen, miniature living room, miniature wardrobe with all kinds of costumes and accessories they can try on and miniature baby's room complete with baby doll, crib, changing station, etc. When the teachers opened the doors to this new room, all of the kids ran in and we were told "Mammas, stand back and just let them do what they want. Let's see how they react." Dylan and his friend Sara ran into the little kitchen. Sara opened up the little cupboards, took out some plastic plates and cups and began setting the table. At first it looked like Dylan was going to help her and I had this odd sensation of looking into the future and seeing my son and his girlfriend/wife/companion in the kitchen preparing dinner for me. It was so surreal. Then Dylan knocked all of the plastic cups and plates off the table with a loud clatter making Sara cry. He quickly left the kitchen and ran over to where a little boy was trying to mount a giraffe with wheels and pushed him off so he could take the giraffe for a spin. The image of Dylan and Sara setting the table was soon forgotten, and I ran over to comfort the little boy who had been left in the dust...

Grilling and chilling

Out on the balcony with papi waiting for the sausages to cook on the grill. Excuse the mess on our beautiful (brown with wonderful 1970s tiles) balcony. It has not been optimized for warm weather use yet!

Bilingualism

Jim Jam is a mainly English-language channel we watch on satellite

Now that Dylan is talking quite a bit in both languages, I've really begun to research bilingualism and the "best" method for raising a fully bilingual child. The predominant method now for raising a fully bilingual child (as opposed to a child who is passively bilingual, meaning he can understand the "minority" language but can't or doesn't speak it) seems to be "One Parent, One Language" (OPOL) and it means that each parent speaks to the child in his native language. I speak to Dylan in English and Cristiano speaks in Italian. We don't always follow this (Cristiano often slips into English with Dylan), but we try to. The hard thing for me is that I have to speak English to Dylan in all situations - even in public and even with Italian friends and family with whom I'd typically speak Italian. Sometimes I feel rude doing this, but it's important that Dylan see me as the English-speaking parent.

I've read and been told that if I only speak English to him at home, he could begin to "reject" the language as he gets older or feel embarrassed of it. I don't want him to feel like English is some secret language we speak at home behind closed doors. I've also been told not to correct him when he makes mistakes in English but to repeat the phrase in the correct way. If he says "I haved a good time at school," I should repeat "Oh, you had a good time at school? Great!" If he begins to feel like he's constantly being corrected in English, he could also reject the language and refuse to speak it. There is always the fear that the "minority" (meaning if we live here, English would be the minority language and if we live in the U.S., Italian would be the minority language) language will be rejected when he reaches school age and wants to conform to be just like his friends.

When Dylan is with me, I only speak to him in English and if we watch television or DVDs, we watch in English. When he's with Cristiano or my in-laws, he speaks and interacts in Italian. My confusion at this point is that I see that he's more advanced in English, and I don't know if I should "push" for him to get to the same level in Italian. Like in English, he counts to five. I don't know if he actually knows he's counting, but he repeats the numbers one to five like he hears on the Baby Einstein DVD. If I even say "one" (as in "Let's get out one of your trucks") he will finish the phrase with "two, three, four, five!" But in Italian, he doesn't count at all. If you say "uno" in Italian, he will scream out "two, three, four, five!" I think this is probably because we never watch Baby Einstein in Italian, and I wonder if I should play it in Italian sometimes even when he is with me. My inclination is not to and to stick it out with the English and not worry about his development in Italian. I think that will come with time - especially given the fact that we are in Italy now - and there's no reason to "push" him.

It used to be thought that kids who were raised bilingual would have learning disabilities or would be slower than other kids but newer studies show that being bilingual can be an advantage. It seems that bilingual kids are able to "filter" better than monolingual kids since they are having to switch back and forth between languages, and this gives them an advantage in some situations and subjects. We shall see. I know it's still early days. So far, it's been really fascinating to watch how Dylan is developing language-wise.

Rite of passage

Last night I fed Dylan his very first pizza. He'd had bites of our pizzas in the past and always seemed pretty interested in them. So I decided to make him his own mini pizza with a whole wheat and cornmeal crust. Before I cut it up into little bite-sized pieces (Dylan typically does not eat finger foods because he has more fun throwing things on the floor, but under my watchful eye and with surprisingly little prodding, he ate all of this!), I took some pictures. Note Dylan's new Bobux kicks! There's a girl from New Zealand who sells them here in Italy. Suuuuuper comfy, all eco-leather, they don't fall off and can't be taken off by mischievous toddlers and unlike the "no-slip" socks we used all winter, they don't slip at all in the house. In theory these could be used outside as well, but I fear Dylan would rip the suede sole to shreds in no time. Next time we will buy the ones with a rubber sole.

Whole wheat and cornmeal crust, you say?

But does it fly?

Mom told me to smile and show some enthusiasm so here goes!

Bossy Dylan and his fixations

Excuse the lack of posts, but Dylan's sleeping patterns have been crazy lately, so I haven't exactly been fresh as a daisy or in the mood for making cutesy posts. He's been waking up between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. and wanting to play. He stands in his bed and lists all of the toys and activities he can see: "car," "drillo" (the CD player with the Italian "crocodile" song), "story" (his books), etc. It's been taking at least two hours to get him back to sleep and then he's been up by 6 a.m. Not only does he want to decide when we sleep (or don't), he thinks he's in charge of entertainment around the house.

When he gets up in the morning, he immediately runs to the TV and says "Meow Cat!," which means he wants to see the Garfield 2 movie. Cristiano's mom got the original Garfield movie free bundled with a magazine and began playing that when he was at her house. He got so obsessed with "Meow Cat" that I actually picked up Garfield 2 when I saw it at the supermarket. Both Garfield movies are full of animals and he loves watching them and making the animal sounds. The trailer from Garfield 2 below. It's actually quite cute and funny (the first time you watch it).


Then a friend gave us a book with a CD containing the "Crocodile song," which is beloved by Italian children. In the morning after I've put the "Meow Cat" on TV in the living room, he runs back to his room and starts saying "drillo! drillo! drillo!" until I put it on. The song is very cute and the idea is that all of the other animals make a specific sound, but what does the crocodile say? The conclusion is that nobody knows! A video of that below. Enjoy!

Wrist strap less than popular

This weekend we had to do some yard work, so I thought I'd try out the wrist strap (aka "leash") to see if I could keep Dylan close while we were working. Our yard is an obstacle course of dangerousness. There's the steep driveway paved in hard stones that Dylan likes to hurtle down at breakneck speed. There's the big drop-off over aforementioned driveway that Dylan runs toward fully intent on leaping into the oblivion. There are my neighbor's garden tools and large open bag of fertilizer lying around. There is the uneven yard with lots of tree roots and things to trip over and bang your head on. I literally can't leave Dylan alone for a millisecond, and his new thing is "escaping" the minute I put him down and running toward the area of most danger. Before he's even been put down, you can see the strategizing wheels turning in his mind and his eyes scanning for escape routes. So I thought with the wrist strap, I'd reward him for staying close and the punishment would be that he'd have to keep the wrist strap on if he didn't obey. I think he's too young to get the whole reward/punishment dynamic. He hated the wrist strap the second I put it on. Not as much yard work got done as we would have liked. Cristiano took this photo with his cell phone and said he'd keep it in case he ever needed to present it to Child Protective Services. Please.

Easter wrap-up

On Easter morning, since I didn't have a basket to give Dylan, I let him play with some plastic eggs I had brought back from the U.S. at some point. They don't do the basket here and there is no "Easter bunny" so I couldn't get my hands on any of the typical American Easter goodies. Kids here get those big chocolate eggs with a surprise inside. Since Dylan can't have chocolate because of his eczema, that wasn't an option.


Yesterday was "Easter Monday" and we spent the day running around and playing out in the sun. He was so tired from the weekend, he passed out while eating dinner. We finally carried him into bed when it became apparent he wasn't going to wake up and finish his pasta.

Easter weekend

coloringeggs
Originally uploaded by michellanea

Today Dylan turned 15 months old. We had a really fun day playing with our friends Anita, Sofia and Oscar. Dylan and Sofia even colored eggs for the first time! More pictures here.

Back to the swings

Last time I posted about the swings, it was October. I hope what seemed like an interminable winter hibernation is finally over. Today was a gorgeous day and Dylan was feeling much better! He is talking so much. It is kind of crazy. As we make our way down the street he says "hi" to the people coming toward us and screams "bye" to old ladies going by on bikes. He speaks mainly in English, but he also says quite a bit in Italian. He repeats a lot too, and we have already figured out that we are going to have to watch what we say!

Fun things we do while home sick

We try on yarmulkes left over from Jewish weddings. It's day five of being sick. Outside it is sunny and beautiful, but inside we are grasping for fun things to do...

Sick day

Mangia, mangia!

Here's a picture of Dylan with Nonna Angelina (she doesn't want to be called great-grandma but by her name "Nonna Angelina" or "Nonna Grande") from a couple of months ago. With my fantabulous new Mac, I'm finally able to transfer photos easily from my cell phone to my computer, and this was a cell phone shot.

Poor Dyl is home sick today with a fever and a bad cough. He woke up crying this morning at about 1 a.m. and he was burning up. I gave him baby acetaminophen and put him in bed with us. This morning after calling his pediatrician on redial for 90 minutes, I was the "lucky caller" and got an actual appointment with her for today at 3:30 p.m. This will be the first time she's ever seen Dylan sick. We normally only go there for check-ups that have been scheduled months in advance. Cristiano wonders if she's actually able to diagnose illnesses or if she just knows how to weigh and measure kids. Let's hope she can at least distinguish strep throat from the common cold.

She's currently on our "black list" for having told us to wait to see a pediatric surgeon for the problem with Dylan's phimosis. We took him to a private pediatric surgeon last week who told us we should have taken care of this problem several months ago. Now it's too late and would be too traumatizing for him. He told us that now we can't do anything until Dylan is two or three years old - old enough to understand what is going on to some extent. If we were to do the procedure now, he would remember it but would not understand why we were doing it and could be emotionally scarred. This surgeon said we should have done it before Dylan was ten months old.