The kid is smart

Lately whenever it is time to go to bed or when anyone mentions the words "sleep" or "bed" (even on TV), Dylan automatically says "big bed." He just wants to let you know where he'll be sleeping. When you ask him, "Well then who sleeps in the little bed?" (that would be Dylan's bed) he goes to get Freddy, the stuffed dog "transitional object" who was supposed to make him feel better about sleeping through the night in his own bed. The other day a neighbor stopped by and asked Dylan which one was his bedroom and he grabbed his hand and led him to our room. The first order of business when we get back from the U.S. (where we will be on the road, jet-lagged and sleeping in different cities every few days; what would be the point of suffering through "sleep training" now?) will be getting him back in his own bed. It's not going to be easy...

Dylan's late nights

It's not all meltdowns and over-stimulation (a term Cristiano is convinced I coined, by the way!).

Dancing with nonna

Out for pizza

Hanging with Sara with whom he shared an entire pizza margherita. She automatically put her crusts on his plate. Fast forward 12 years or so and I see them zipping around together on a Vespa (over my dead body)

No country for (very) young men

(This is something I posted on my more general "expat" blog, but I thought I'd post it here too!)

That's not exactly true. Italy is extremely child-friendly in some ways, but I'm finding that it's woefully not in others. Children in Italy are welcome just about everywhere - restaurants, evening weddings (I know this as we personally had Italian guests mention in passing a week before our wedding that they'd be bringing their five grandkids to the evening reception; unfortunately for us, the kids' pasta-al-pomodoro menu cost the same per person as the adult menu so we spent an additional 400 Euros on children we'd never met and technically didn't even invite...) and parties. However, this apparent love for children doesn't translate into services or infrastructure (high chairs, changing stations or sidewalks with ramps that allow you to get a stroller up and down with ease) that make it easy to take a child out and about. The other day I was struggling to get the stroller past a car parked on the narrow sidewalk on the main drag of our town when the driver rolled down his window to give my son a little smile and a wave. Moving his car so I wouldn't have to get down off the sidewalk and brave oncoming traffic with an 18-month-old in a stroller didn't occur to him, apparently...

"Guaranteed fun for all children" was the promise of this magic and puppet show in the main piazza of the beach town in Tuscany where we have a summer apartment. Too bad it begins at 9:30 p.m.!

My latest confusion has to do with the opening hours and times for things that are meant to be for kids. Italian kids apparently follow no routine and have no official bedtime. This makes attempting to raise a child who does follow a routine and has a bedtime almost impossible. I should say that my son HAD a routine and HAD a bedtime, and when we followed the routine and the bedtime, life was much easier for us as a family and my son was much more well rested. He's not one of those mellow fall-asleep-on-the-go kids (please don't try to give me pointers on how I can make him fall asleep in a stroller. Won't.Work.With.My.Kid. If your kid slept in loud restaurants, in the cinema or wherever else, it has little to do with your parenting skills - you got lucky!). If he doesn't sleep at home in his bed, there's hell to pay. Thus I like to keep him on even a loose schedule.

There's a huge carnival near our apartment at the beach with a "Festa dei Bambini from age 0 to 14" every night. Oddly it's closed ALL day every day and opens at 8:30 p.m.

But Italy is not working with us. For one thing, my son is entering that stage where he's got little "amici" and so we now have social activities to take into consideration. Dinner is usually around 9 p.m. even when children are involved and that makes a 9 p.m. bedtime impossible to stick to. We also spend a lot of time with extended family and nobody else has a bedtime for their children, so it means that if I try to keep my son on his routine, we are the "odd ones out." And I get a lot of flak.

Anyway, this brings me to a few things that left me perplexed this past weekend while we were at the beach. My son will be spending almost a week there with his nonni while we are in Milan finishing up work before leaving for the U.S. on Aug. 15. The good thing about where we go to the beach in Tuscany is that there are quite a few activities for children. The bad thing is that they all start right around the time I usually put him to bed! I have a feeling my in-laws (who don't tend to follow my routines) will have one cranky toddler on their hands, and we will pay dearly for it as well when we come to collect him. I'm trying not to stress out about it...

Here's another thing. In talking with my American friends, they put their kids to bed around 7 p.m. (maybe it's just Italian city living but I barely know anyone who is home from work at that hour...). That allows them to have some "adult time" at night after the kids are in bed. In Italy it seems the kids are always up and running wild. Don't Italian parents need a little time at night to eat dinner with their spouses, read a book, watch a movie or check their email? As much as Italy is supposedly so "family-oriented" I find the long work day and late dinner time does not make for quality family time. At 10 p.m. I'm usually exhausted and just beginning to clean up from dinner when all I'd like to do is have a few minutes to talk to my husband or relax with a book. Often my son is still up at that hour and in addition to trying to load the dishwasher, I have to try to get him to climb down off of it, bathed and into his pajamas. Does anyone else have these same problems or am I doing something wrong? Sorry for the long, rambling (and probably boring) domestic-related confessional post, but I feel like I'm failing somewhere.

Weekend festival in Tuscany

crocodile dance
Originally uploaded by michellanea

Here's Dylan "dancing" to the Crocodile Song (the one he's obsessed with that is on auto-repeat at our house 24/7) at a Tuscan food festival right behind our apartment at the beach. This song has moves and everything, but I never knew them. I guess we can practice at home so Dylan can participate the next time we are at such an event. This was the first song during the kiddie dance portion of the evening, and Dylan was not yet warmed up.

There are a lot of great kiddie things going on down here but, unfortunately, they all get started late. Tonight there's going to be a circus in the main piazza but it starts at 9:30 p.m.! Last night Dylan didn't get to bed until 11 p.m. - and was up at 7 a.m. as usual and cranky all morning. It is summertime and I'm trying to be free-to-be-you-and-me and go with the flow. I don't want Dylan to be the odd man out or have the "weird mom" who puts him to bed when it is still light outside and all of the other kids haven't even eaten dinner yet. But I think 11 p.m. is late for an 18-month-old. I was looking up information on appropriate bed times on the Web and all of the American sites say from 6:30 p.m. (the work day isn't even near being over here at that time so...) to 8 p.m. max.

Sleep is still our major issue, and I sense that Dylan is a kid who'd do better on an American schedule. But for now we are still "in Rome" and doing as the Romans do...

You looking at me?

The fever seems to be going away but the spots are still multiplying. The D man is quarantined to the house. Cristiano has a fever as well and is moaning on the couch, which is a big deal. He usually never gets sick and when he does, he "hides" it and plays tough guy. I'm administering meds to two "patients," and we are all going a bit stir crazy...

His shirt says in Italian slang something like "And what's your problem/deal?"

A less flattering but more close-up shot that still doesn't do justice to his spottiness...

Dylan, the wonder boy!

counting2
Originally uploaded by michellanea

Here's a video of him counting to ten in Italian with his papi. He's usually pretty good counting in English too, but he kept getting flustered in front of the camera. Nonetheless, I have a video here. Not much time to write. Today he is still feverish and has even MORE spots all over. And he's vomiting.

On swine flu and chickenpox

Yesterday I called around to see if I could get Dylan a swine flu shot as they've been warning people traveling to North America to get one. No dice. The shot won't be ready until September.

Then last night Dylan was incredibly clingy and whiny, which is very unusual. He felt hot to the touch (though it is over 100 degrees here and we only have a trickle of AC in one room, which we rarely use anyway, so all of us probably feel hot to the touch for the better part of the summer) and though I couldn't get him to sit still or stop screaming long enough to take his temperature, I gave him baby acetaminophen. He slept restlessly and writhed and kicked all night. I know this since he sleeps in our bed. Sigh. This morning he still felt hot AND had strange red dots on his face, feet and arms. Some look like mosquito bites but others are small. I called his pediatrician, and we are going this afternoon at 4 p.m. She said chickenpox is going around. Or it could be Scarlet Fever. Or the Sixth Disease...

Dylan HATES going to the pediatrician. He starts screaming bloody murder if he even sees someone wearing a white lab coat (like the pharmacist). Today on my Twitter I wrote that I had a "ped appointment" and someone thought I was going to get a mani-pedi. I wish! The childless are so naive...and so much better rested than I. And have time to get pedicures.


UPDATE: It is not chickenpox but the pediatrician (not the pedicurist) can't explain what the rash is. She said that because he has such sensitive skin anyway, it may just be a manifestation of the fever he has. His throat and ears are very red as well. She gave us ibuprofen instead of the acetaminophen (she said it is a better anti-inflammatory) for the fever and an antibiotic but said to wait a few days to administer the antibiotic to see if it is viral and passes on its own.

4th of July

Dylan enters the festivities

Sitting quietly (shocker!) during the magician's show

Dylan not pictured as he got bored with the clown and tried to run out of the park (but was stopped by the Secret Service agents patrolling the perimeter of the place...)

On Saturday, we went to a nice picnic sponsored by the U.S. Consulate and various American and Italian companies. It was held in the sculpture garden of a contemporary art museum in Milan. I don't think Dylan understood enough of what was going on to get in touch with his "American side" but he had a good time nonetheless. He wasn't interested in the corn on the cob, baked beans or hot dogs but he did eat cotton candy for the first time. Maybe next year he will appreciate the holiday more, especially as our plan (fingers crossed) is to be living in the U.S.!

Nonna Angelina Jan. 1, 1930 - July 5, 2009

Cristiano with his nonna in Greece

We will miss you, nonna. How fitting that you went on a Sunday, the most important day of the week for you (you'd plan for days and days and stress all of us out asking "What should I make on Sunday? I have to know so I can buy the ingredients at the market on Thursday..." as if it were the most important question to be resolved during the week) and the day we have always gathered together as a family. You could whip up a meal just as you could whip us all into shape. You were truly a strong woman and a model to follow. Rest in peace now that you are with your husband Francesco, son Giorgio, granddaughter Luna, son-in-law Loris and all of the others who went before you in such an untimely manner. We are so happy that we were with you to the end and so happy that Dylan got to know his nonnina if only for a little while...

One of the last pictures of Dylan and nonnina taken about six weeks ago

Mr. Milanese

A love for fast cars and wearing sunglasses, even indoors...

In completely unrelated news, I've been diagnosed with a form of eczema on my foot. It is SO itchy and uncomfortable. To think that I have this on one small patch of my foot and it is driving me crazy and then imagine that my poor pumpkin suffers with it all over his body, well, that just upsets me even more. The prediction that he would "outgrow" the eczema by 18 months didn't hold true and we are still combating it day in and day out. Dylan doesn't complain that much per se (he's had it since birth so for him it is normal), but he does scratch a ton especially at night in bed. He's an incredibly restless sleeper. We have to keep his nails trimmed so he won't scratch himself until he bleeds. Fortunately, this kid is a tough little guy and a real trooper!