All I want for Christmas is--- Monday Listicles

So I’m back from taking the week off from blogging. Although, I didn’t really take the week off from blogging as I went around and read (and tried to comment on) all my usual blogs. I guess I just took the week off from writing. I don’t know how I benefited from it apart from going to sleep a little earlier every night. Anyway, I’m easing back into the swing of things by joining in with Stasha, a.k.a. Northwestmommy for Monday Listicles. Today’s prompt is the ten things I hope for this Christmas, which should be easy enough as all I’m doing lately is revising everybody’s Christmas wish lists and writing Santa letters.

What I hope for this Christmas:

1. Sleep. The girl appears to be sleeping better, this past week she hasn’t woken up every night so I’m hoping this keeps up, improves even, and most importantly doesn’t all go to hell from the jet-lag when we go to Houston this year.

2. A bra that fits. The single most terrible thing about living in Italy is that they don’t measure bras in cups and inches (or centimeters), and it’s pretty hard to find a cup size larger than a C. So I usually end up having to buy a cup size that is too small or, in the rare event that the cup size is fine the band is too big. Since I haven’t been back to the US in three years and have been pregnant twice since, you can imagine what state my bras are in. My first stop as soon as I land is a lingerie store. (And target, no one’s keeping me away from target).

3. A book. And not just any book. I want to find a really good book, and I want to read it all the way through in one sitting. And it has to be an actual paper, real book. For once, I’d like to just take a few hours and read a book uninterrupted instead of maniacally thumbing through my kindle in line or in a waiting room, cause it seems I only ever read on electronic devices nowadays at the post office, at the grocery store, in the doctor’s waiting room…

4. Someone to organize all my movies, shows and music. My one and only New Year’s resolution last year was to declutter my life. I’ve managed to do some of it, still working on a lot, but what I haven’t gotten around to, and frankly have no desire to get around to it is organizing my movies, shows and music. And since chucking it all in the trash is not the answer, I need someone to just come over and do it for me. Ok? Thanks.

5. Find a school I’m happy with. I knew this was going to be an issue sooner or later, but honestly I expected it to be a little later. I don’t like the Boy’s preschool. I’ll get into the whys and hows another time. I’ve talked to them again, but if I don’t see some serious improvement I’m going to have to look for a different school and I’m not all that hopeful cause I’m afraid that what I take issue with may just be a cultural thing and not something I can fix. But I want him to enjoy school, I want him to be happy. He’s going to be in school for a long, long time starting now, and it has to be a positive experience.

6. A house. We’ve been renting for a really long time. In fact we’ve been renting forever since I’ve never owned a house. We’ve been looking at houses for the past twelve years (I’m not kidding), we saw hundreds of apartments in Milan and we’ve seen many, many houses since we moved out here in the middle of nowhere. So it’s time. I want to find a house that doesn’t make me vomit and that I can afford. How friggin’ hard is that??

7. Shoes. As I’ve mentioned I own quite a few shoes, but as I get older I’m less willing to settle for second best. So this year for Christmas I want a pair (or two) of really comfortable high heels, that make my legs and ass look great, but (and here’s the clincher) that don’t hurt my feet if I stand for longer that 13 seconds.

8. Abs. Without breaking a sweat. Enough said.

And now the last two, serious ones:

9. Happiness. This one’s two-fold. I want my children to be happy. I want to know they’re happy. I don’t want to spend many a waking (and some a sleeping) hour worrying about their happiness. And I want to find a way to make the people around me a little happier. I’m not being all altruistic either, I’m want this for me, because if the people around me are happier than I’m happier and more relaxed.

10. Health. Lately it seems all I ever read about is the great vaccine debate (which, incidentally, I now feel compelled to write about, so be warned you’ll find a ranting post in the near future), but I gotta tell you, I don’t give a crap if my kids (or I for that matter) get the flu or the chicken pox or whatever else that’s not life threatening but just a massive pain in the ass. I do, however, want the husband to be healthy. And I don’t want him to be healthy for now, or not get sick in Houston or anything short term. I want him to be HEALTHY. I want leukemia to be a forgotten word, somewhere in the distant past. I want him to be healthy for a really, really long time. In fact, I want him to die of old age when we are so decrepit that death seems like a new and exciting adventure. I want him to see his great grandkids. So Santa, or whoever, forget the rest of the list and just give us HEALTH. I can take care of the rest myself. Thanks.

So tell me, what’s on your Christmas wish list?

Smells like teen spirit

The other night I watched 10 things I hate about you, a pretty anonymous 90’s high school movie with Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t bad, but it did get me thinking. A few years ago someone asked me if I would’ve liked to go back to high school, be 16 again, and I said yes, but only if I could go back with my current knowledge, my current “wisdom”, so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

Last night as I was watching this movie, I realized that going to high school with a thirty-year-old’s knowledge and wisdom would be insane. The great and terrible thing about the teen years (at least for my generation) was how intensely we experienced life. An unexpected good grade, a phone call from a friend, the right look across the hall from that guy incited a joy so profound, so boundless that we couldn’t help but squeal it out it was too grand to contain, by the same token, a teacher’s reprimand, a nasty note from a classmate, or a snubbing look from that guy were enough to plunge us into a pit of darkness and depression so vast that all the might of the heavens didn’t seem like enough to dig us out. And yet we all survived.

Now that I’m in my thirties I look back on that time in my life with a certain fondness, I think of the girl that I was with a very mild regret. I miss the unadulterated enthusiasm; I miss the larger than life feelings for trivial things. I wish I could go back and relive the excitement of that first kiss, my first love, my first broken heart because as we get older we inevitably lose the intensity and the stamina for drama.

Now I realize that the problems I face are infinitely larger than they were and yet as a mother, as a wife, as an adult, my reaction has to inevitably be more composed. I simply cannot indulge myself with a flood of tears for a pimple on prom night when the challenges become birthing, raising, and generally keeping alive two small people. As an adult when I heard that my husband had leukemia I burst into tears for a good ten minutes, I called my mom (waking her up in the middle of the night due to the time difference) for comfort, and then I composed myself cause I had to go in and see him, I had to handle the children, I had to spare his parents any unnecessary pain, in short, I had to be an adult about it; in high school when “the love of my life” broke up with me, I cried for six months (an eternity), I listened to “our song” on repeat every day in the car, in my room in the dark, on my headphones at night, I effectively ruined half of my own senior year (and quite probably bored my friends to tears as well), and I never, not once, saw him again after graduating.

So now when I watch teen movies, especially the ones that came out at or around the time that I actually was a teen, I think back and pine for those carefree days, the days of huge victories and of great disappointments, the days were tiny problems warranted grand reactions because that is all we knew. The days when a kiss was monumental, a look, a touch, were memorable, important, worthy of being talked about, dissected and analyzed for hours on end. The days when “do you think he likes me” garnered our collective attention just as much as poopy diapers elicit now. I pine for those days, when I think about it, not because I really want to go back, not because they were “the best days of our lives”, they were pretty crappy too, but because, let’s be honest, it was fun. The teen years are so much fun compared to what comes next. So, I would go back and relive that time, not with my current maturity but with the appropriate immaturity to actually enjoy all the craziness. 

All this because Heath Ledger was really hot in that movie. ;-)

First Day

Yesterday was the Boy’s first day of preschool. This is going to be one of those mundane posts with lots of pictures exactly like everyone else’s pictures, but it’s a pretty monumental step for us so just bear with me and try not to roll your eyes too much!

The first thing he said to me as soon as he woke up was “do I get to go to big school today?” (as opposed to the Baby Parking, which, as indicated by the name is little kids' school). I was both happy and sad at his enthusiasm. We got dressed and had breakfast in record time and I managed to get in a couple of obligatory first pictures, here you go:

Surprisingly, he let me put his smock on for the picture. 

The enthusiasm makes him silly

Sillier and sillier

And then we sneaked out of the house, cause the Girl was none too happy that her big brother was going to school without her and she had to go back to Daycare all on her lonesome.

The Boy was unbelievably excited at being able to ride his bike to school, “like the big kids” and I sniffled all the way (thankfully it’s a two minute ride, so I didn’t have time to really start the water works).

His preschool is right across the street from that bell tower in the background

He parked his bike right at the front entrance

We explored his classroom together, put everything in his cupboard (which he shares with another little girl), he donned his smock and was ready to go, a little sad to see me leave, but excited to meet the other kids. I walked out and thankfully ran into a neighbor so had to maintain a modicum of decorum, cause I had a LOT of pent up angst. I really hope I manage to get myself together and be a little more relaxed about this stuff or I may die from a heart attack (or lack of sleep) before they get to middle school.

Checking out the toys

You can go now, mama

other classroom

shared cupboards

Thankfully, when I got home and looked over the pictures I found something that snapped me out of my melancholic mood pronto. You may recall a recent post about the Boy’s name and our decision to possibly change it, you can read it here, but for the short version his name is Alexandre, pronounced Alexander, and we’ve started finding some difficulty with his having a foreign name (for Italy) with an unconventional spelling. This is the result:

I’m going to talk to his teachers today, cause I’d really like him to at least learn to spell his name correctly and not have any confusion on that point! As far as the legally changing it part, we’re on the fence still, we’ll see how this year goes.

At noon we rode our bikes home and had a nice quiet lunch, just the two of us, before going to get his sister from daycare. Starting today he eats lunch there, so we’ll see, they have a nice lady who cooks lunch as it’s a small parochial school so it should at least be good!

Toodles for now, I hope everyone else’s first days of school are going well!