This and that

We’ve been in Houston for a week now and I’ve just been absorbing stuff like a sponge. It’s so strange to be here. Everything’s changed, everything’s the same.

It’s amusing to me that I’ve been asked more than once how I’m finding my way around, do I need directions, do I have a TomTom… the answers are just fine; no, thank; and yes, yes I do. It’s amusing because I grew up here, I learned to drive here, my mom lives in the same part of town and none of the major landmarks have moved, so why I would have a hard time getting around is beyond me. Concurrently, though, I haven’t been here in three years so sometimes if I have to get somewhere I don’t remember the most efficient route, I’ll think of the roads I would have taken from my old neighborhood but I won’t remember how to get there from where I am right now. That feels a bit weird. Also, some friends have moved to neighborhoods where I have never been before (Houston is BIG) so going there I do get lost, I’d probably get lost even if I had lived here all these years though too.

Readjusting to family life has been hard. This is the first time I’ve spent Christmas in Houston since my Dad died, this makes it strange for me on many levels. First of all, since my Dad died this is only the third Christmas I’ve spent with my family, the first one was in Rome the year he died – that wasn’t a very jolly holiday season – and the second one was at my place right before the boy was born as I was too pregnant to travel. This year we had Christmas with my Mom, her new husband and his children (which, incidentally, sounds weird as we are all adults, should I have amended to “his adult children” which would have been oxymoronic at best, or possibly I could have used the word offspring, which always sounds to me like we’re talking more of animals than humans). It’s mind boggling to me to have stepsiblings at this stage in my life. Thankfully we don’t have the whole room/bathroom sharing, who do you love more, I hate you, drama that we probably would have had had we been teenagers, but still, it’s odd to find yourself spending family holidays with a slew of new family members that you don’t really know.

I am remarkably set in my ways. I like doing things my way. I like the pace of my family life, which is totally incompatible with the pace of my mom’s family life. This was predictable, as I grew up with her and thus know how things work around here, and yet it surprises me every time. It’s particularly hard to be laid back and go with the flow with children (the small, young variety) in tow. I’m using compromise, some deep breathing and the concept of “no, today I’m going to do it my way hope I don’t offend anyone” to get through it. I suspect my mother’s doing the same on her end.

These are some random thoughts of the day and two cute pictures from Christmas morning (for your viewing pleasure). 

Toodles.

The Girl, the Husband and the Boy

The Girl and I

Linking up with Amy from Lucky Number 13 today for Virtual Coffee, although this isn't technically a coffee post it's still our last tuesday of 2011 and I'm sentimental about this kind of stuff!

I wasn’t killed by a turkey

So, I didn’t suffer a fatal attack of indigestion after thanksgiving, which, incidentally, we celebrated on Sunday here because it’s not a holiday weekend in Italy. I know, why?  

Anyway, just wanted to let y’all know that I’m on hiatus this week. I’m tired and have no writing in me. So, instead of putting out half-assed crap for you to read I’m turning in early and catching up on my shows, hopefully this will get the creative juices flowing (and, more importantly, unclog my tivo). Or something.

But I’m not leaving you high and dry… I have pictures for you. Thanksgiving pictures. Because now that you’ve finally finished off the turkey leftovers and are starting to forget the family drama you absolutely need me to bring it all back to the top of your minds. You’re welcome.

Thanksgiving 2011 

Despite being in Italy, away from home for most of us, there was food:

the spread

yeah, baby!

dessert.... (the healthy fruit salad? just for show!)

And festive mise en place:

The womenfolk in the kitchen:

All the men cleared out when we mentioned carving the turkey... wimps!

Friends relaxing together:

The little kids. The big kids weren't all that keen to be photographed.

Love:

and lollipops:

 And outdoor fun

Mischief:

I'm not sure what she was getting into, but her who me face says it all!

 And dishes done:

me, in the kitchen

And lots and lots of this:

See you next week!

Family Matters (Virtual Coffee {10})

Family has been on my mind a lot lately.

I did a google search on “immediate family” right before I started writing cause I wasn’t sure if it included just my husband and children or also my parents and siblings and I was astonished to find out that immediate family includes my husband, children, grand children, parents and siblings (whole, half or step – of which I now seem to have at least one per category) as well as my in laws (mother, father, brother, sister as well as possible future son and daughter); I guess I was just being narrow minded when I thought immediate was actually, well, immediate.

It puts a whole extra layer of thought and consequence to the whole “you’re not just marrying the man, but his whole family too” concept. Although, bizarrely, first degree relatives are just spouse, children, parents and siblings, I would’ve thought aunts, uncles and cousins would’ve fit right in there.

Anyway, I’ve been giving family a lot of thought. My family is all over the place. I rarely see my mother and brother as they’re in the US (lucky bastards!), my grandma’s in Brazil, my half-siblings are all in Italy but nowhere near us, so I practically never see them, this makes me feel a little isolated sometimes as well as a possibly over-protective of my little family unit (husband and kids).

I know, this is starting to read a bit like a demented census, brother, sister, husband, children blah, blah, blah…

On the other hand, I seem to be constantly surrounded by the husband’s family. They’re all over the place too, and yet they always just seem to be here. It’s a little twilight zone-ish. I’m not complaining or anything, I get along with my whole extended (or should I say immediate?) in-law family and I’m happy to be quite close to most of them but we’re, well, different.  Of course, most of the time different is good, it helps define boundaries and roles but other times it’s just hard and tiring and exasperating to have to wrap my mind around another family dynamic.

Each family has it’s own dynamic; it’s own very specific and very personal patterns of interaction. It’s like a dance, where each member knows his own complicated steps and it usually comes together harmoniously, or discordantly, but it makes its own particular kind of sense.

Family matters are a bit tense right now, nothing major, and certainly nothing regarding the husband or I (or our children), but it makes for a lot of drama. Mostly unwanted drama on our part, as we’re really trying to concentrate on the husband’s recovery and not things that really are no concern of ours. And yet… and yet… we always seem to get sucked in, despite our best intentions, and it’s unsettling and it’s unhealthy I find. I’m not going to talk about it, it’s not my business to share, plus right now I’m more interested in the whole philosophical aspect that in the actual reality of it all.

There’s a lot less drama on my side of the family, there are also many more miles. Does physical distance play a role in our involvement, or is it the ever-elusive family dynamic that differs? And how, does one change it were one to want to (and I want to)?

Ideally, I would like to crank up the interest, the closeness and the intimacy with my side of the family, just as I would proportionally tone down the theatrics, recriminations, side-takings and phone calls on the other side of the family. Is a happy medium possible or would it require too drastic a change in the family dynamic? A change that inevitably would call for too many adjustments on the part of individuals who, more than likely, are happy, or used to, or set in their ways and unwilling and uninterested in changing, because, after all, why would they want to change if I’m the only one perceiving a problem. Because that’s the thing about family dynamics, they are set in place and perpetrated by individuals in a family and that’s what works for them, even if it doesn’t seem to work or even if it doesn’t fully work for all family members.

So the husband and I find ourselves in a strange limbo, we truly come from different worlds, with different experiences, with different, ingrained dynamics that don’t completely fit us anymore and we have to find a way, a path, that works for us, for our family (and here I’m only included the husband, children and myself). We have to create and perpetrate our own family dynamic, one that works for us and that ideally takes the good from the examples we were given and removes the bad.

I know, I’ve been rambling on forever and really this is much more of a discussion for whiskey than coffee, but you see, I’ve been thinking a lot about family lately and all this writing, all these words, really help me work out the jumbled stuff in my head. It’s important to me to do this, it’s important to hear your opinions, it’s important to talk about this, though no real answers are (or indeed can be) forthcoming, because at the end of the day family matters doesn’t it?


Now, go say hi to our hostess Amy who's totally "in the Spring of things"!

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Happy Easter... no I'm not high.

I swear I haven't been smoking anything, today is Easter at our house. We decided to celebrate Easter early because we didn’t want to spend it apart for another year running, and you know, Mohammed and mountains and whatnot, so Easter came early here.

We had fantastic weather, the husband barbecued, we lounged around in the sun, the kids played in their new dirt pit (a sandbox feels like too much hassle, and it makes no difference whatsoever to them, actually a dirt pit is better cause of all the worms), and then we went for a nice bike ride. I forewent my diet in favor of the chocolate eggs and decided not to give a crap and enjoy it.

I won’t talk about all the emotions we felt today, because I refuse to post two depressing entries in a row, but let’s just say that we managed to enjoy the day despite the ticking clock above our heads.

So I’m keeping it short and sweet today, pictures follow so click on the link if you want to see those. All I’m going to say is we enjoyed the husband’s last day home and tomorrow is another day. So there.

Super Dad

I had one of those 24 hour stomach bugs today, which basically means that starting at 5am to 2pm the toilet bowl and I got really up close and personal. Thankfully, it was a short-lived love affair, we just aren’t that compatible. The remaining time till now was spent lamenting our relationship in bed in alternately a cold sweat and writhing pain. Predictably, I got sick on the nanny’s day off so the husband had to step up to the plate and take one for the team. And I must say, times like these make me really glad I decided to reproduce with him specifically, he was brilliant. I honestly thought he was going to run screaming from the house by mid-morning (that’s when all the poopy diapers hit), but not only did he remain calm and collected he managed to arrange snacks, change diapers, entertain, wrangle, calm tantrums and “I miss mommy” tear-fests, feed a healthy lunch, put down for a nap all pretty much on schedule and with minimal prompting from the sickbed.  He’s now feeding them dinner, hot dogs (not my first choice but who am I to complain and get this… sautéed carrots).

And it’s not like he’s had much practice, I mean, he was pretty hands-on with the boy but then after the illness he just hadn’t had the energy and as many of you well know, two kids don’t require twice the energy as one, they require tenfold the energy as one.

So this is a brief post so I can congratulate myself on picking the right guy.

Oh, right… and to thank him for a job well done and for letting me be sick in peace.

My Dad, the smuggler

Today would’ve been my Dad’s birthday, or was my Dad’s birthday, or something to that effect. My Dad passed away in 2006, so though it technically still is his birthday to me, it really isn’t for him any longer, is it…

But anyway, a few words about my Dad today seem fitting.

My Dad was born in 1925, and you have no idea how much I would like to be a teenager again, just so I could roll my eyes at him and scoff “Dad, you are so last century!”.

Ba-da-da-boom

My dad taught me loads, and the older I get the more I realize how important many of the lessons he imparted actually are. He taught me the importance of family. I remember the torture that was dinner time at my house when I was a teen and young adult. I wanted to go out with my friends or eat dinner in front of the tv or while talking on the phone, but no, he insisted that the whole family eat dinner together every night. Every night. I can count on one hand the nights when I went out to dinner with friends (ok, maybe two hands…), I could go out after dinner, but not for dinner. Dinner was mandatory family time. Only now do I realize how important that family time was. We would talk (well, he would talk… my dad was a talker!), and we learned so much. Table manners for one, no phones, the use of all the appropriate utensils (you eat your salad with a salad fork dammit!), elbows in, chin up, shoulders down and fork to mouth for crying out loud! We learned patience, waiting for everyone to finish their plate before moving on to the next course, we learned to make conversation and to listen without letting our eyes glaze over. We got to know our parents and they got to know us, and we learned to be with adults and not just our peers. We learned respect.

My Dad was an optimist. He always found the good, even when things looked bad. He was a happy guy. He liked good food and good wine, he liked beautiful women and beautiful things. He was a geologist and though he worked in the oil business he still loved stones. He could sit in jewelry stores for hours talking about quality and clarity and color density, and amazingly, the jewelers would sit with him for hours even if he didn’t end up buying anything. He taught me that passion is infectious, so it’s important to be passionate about something.

My Dad talked me out of going to med school. Thank God! Cause I would’ve hated it, and been horrible at it, and if heaven forbid, I had managed to graduate from med school I would’ve been a truly bad doctor. Sometimes our parents really do know us better than we know ourselves.

He was a really smart guy. A scientist but, I think, a humanist at heart. He loved to read, he watched documentaries, he still remembered parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy memorized when in school (in the 1940’s). He was also a pain in the ass. He hated the music we listened to, and kept trying to steer us towards Puccini or Brahms, he thought most of the movies we watched were garbage and let us know, vocally and repeatedly, how idiotic he thought we were being and let’s not even talk about the sitcoms. He was, of course, always right.

I had the worst fights of my life with him, and he said some truly hurtful things, but he taught me to argue my point, organize my thoughts and present them properly, even in the heat of the moment. In fact, my husband rarely argues with me, because he says I always win in the end, even when I’m dead wrong. Thanks Dad!

He was a resourceful guy, during WWII my Dad, my Uncle and a friend of theirs smuggled salt and cigarettes from Switzerland to Italy to help support their families. My Dad, the smuggler. This story always made me laugh.

He was generous, always happy to lend a hand, always putting our material needs before his. He also ruled the house with an iron fist and what he said went, no arguments. He was a bit of a  sexist and raised my brother and I with a double standard, but only as far as what we were allowed to do socially, we both got the same education and opportunities. He was born in the 1920’s, but he was a forward thinking, modern man. I’m sorry if you didn’t get to know him.

He had a strong personality a charisma that is hard to find, he also had a knack for ticking people off, let’s just say he wasn’t the kind of man that went unnoticed. He was far from perfect, and he wasn’t easy to live with and yet I miss him every day. Because, you see,  despite his flaws, he was perfect to me.

Happy Birthday, Darling Boy

You turned three years old today, but you don’t seem to like three, you keep insisting that you’re two years old. I don’t really mind, it’s only a number. You are a little big to be two, you’re actually a little big to be three too, most people think you’re four at least, but honestly, they’re only numbers. There are many reasons that make me realize you’re growing up, possibly too fast for me. You sit and play for quite some time, all by yourself, with your cars, making up stories with plots and subplots, conversations and descriptions; you don’t need me to entertain you anymore and you don’t need a full-time audience either now, this makes me a little sad.

You brush your own teeth, you don’t want me to help, you even pull up your sleeves on your own. This year, at your party, you seemed to understand what was going on, that we hadn’t just randomly gotten you a whole bunch of presents for no reason, but you still hid your face in your arms when we sang happy birthday. You thanked me for your birthday cake and said it was beautiful. That almost made me cry.

You’re starting to act like a big brother, no prompting from us. You went and got your sister some pizza when you realized you were eating it and she wasn’t, you were afraid of the sea lion at the aquarium so you wouldn’t let her get close to the glass to see it, when you thought we had left you two alone at the park you took her hand and started heading home.

There’s a million little things that make me feel that you’re growing up too fast. I know you’re not, you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, but still, I miss the little dark haired baby I held in my arms for the first time three years ago. And yet, I look at you and I’m so proud of you. I looked at you today on your big new bike, your feet couldn’t touch the floor, but you were whizzing along, so happy, so delighted, so big. Happy Birthday darling boy, you changed my life, your smile lights up my life, you make my heart sing.

Family effort, plus two friends!

I heart New Yorkers

New Yorkers have a bad rap. I grew up in Texas where people are generally nice, and polite (to your face) and there is still a strong sense of Southerness in manners and hospitality. Whereas New Yorkers… well, I always heard about how cold and superior they were, how self-involved, how you could be having a heart attack in the middle of the street and no one would so much as glance your way. And for many years I subscribed to this cliché. Until, of course, I met some actual New Yorkers. We have some friends in New York, which we rarely get to see, barely even once a year, oftentimes less than that. And yet, this weekend they showed us how kind, how generous, how altruistic New Yorkers can be. How the fact that we barely see each other doesn’t mean anything when you’re kindred spirits.

But let me start at the beginning, the Husband’s cousin, P, started running marathons a few years back and the first marathon he ran was NY in 2008. He and the husband had often talked about running NY together in 2009 but then we got pregnant with the girl who was due in November and everything got moved back a year. When the husband got sick, P promised him that he would run NY 2010, despite some physical setbacks, and dedicate the effort to him. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like P was going to be able to run, but he’s hardheaded as can be and has a lot of faith in fate so despite a really bad knee he trained and trained and got on the plane to NY. We got P together with our New York friends as he was alone and they all really hit it off (of course they would, they’re all wonderful people, being our friends and all). But by Friday it was obvious that P wasn’t going to be running since he was barely walking. He was massively disappointed and disheartened, cause he had put a lot of faith and heart in this effort, he really wanted to do something physical, tangible to show the husband how much he cared. Throughout the Husband’s illness P constantly cheered him on, saying that conquering Leukemia was like running a marathon, he just had to have faith and keep going and he’d reach the finish line. This is why this marathon was so important to him, and not being able to run it, I guess felt like a big failure to P, like he was letting the husband down.

Now, getting to the point of this post, D, who also likes to run marathons (what is with this marathon lark anyway?) offered to run in P's stead (for the husband). This may seem like a little thing to you, but it was a huge thing for us. We haven’t seen D in years, he was the boyfriend (now husband) of a friend who lived in Milan for only a few months. He had no earthly reason to take a day out of his busy life and run a marathon he had decided not to run for a guy, P, who he had barely just met who was running for a guy he hadn’t seen or talked to in eons, other than the fact that he’s a really nice guy.
So how anyone can say that these people are cold and self-involved, these people who took P in and helped him out, took him to the doctor and watched over him, for no reason other than he’s related to us and they’re our friends, these people who stood out in the cold to cheer D (and vicariously P and the husband) on and take pictures for us, who ran a freaking marathon for us for crying out loud, well all I can say is if that's what you think then you haven’t met a real New Yorker yet.

D running

his shirt says for Alex

P and D

our friends

Thanks guys, you’re the reason why we heart New York.

Tomatoes and how we inadvertently traumatize our children

My whole house smells like tomato sauce. Literally. It’s like we live in a pizzeria. Why, you ask? Well, these are the joys of having a vegetable garden. Our tomatoes are starting to ripen, this is both a wonderful and a terrifying prospect. Wonderful because when I’m late getting dinner on the table and The Boy’s hungry I just send him outside to pick a couple of tomatoes and he can eat them still warm from the sun, and believe me there is nothing more delicious. Terrifying because I’ve got 8 tomato plants (3 “cuore di bue” – haven’t found a translation for it, it’s typically Italian; 3 San Marzano and 2 Cherry tomatoes) and though the fruits have just recently really started ripening, the plants are FULL of green tomatoes, and this means that I’m going to be eating, cooking and preserving tomatoes till kingdom come. Thank goodness they’re delish so it’s worth all the work!

My vegetable garden

Cuore di bue (Ox heart) tomato, this one was huge!

On another completely unrelated note we are unfortunately now starting  to see the effects of The Husband’s illness on  The Boy. He is going through what looks like a massive attack of separation anxiety. Every time we leave the house he cries, he wants to go with the one that’s leaving or he wants to stay home but doesn’t want you to leave, it’s very frustrating for us cause we can’t go anywhere without a scene and very sad for him cause he’s not relaxed. So we have to find a way to deal with it. I realize that it’s perfectly normal, his dad disappeared from one day to the next and no adequate explanation was provided, so from his point of view when we leave there is the chance that we may not come back.

Before The Boy could talk properly he would sometimes try to get the pictures he liked out of books, like he could pick up the ball in the book with his fingers, and the fact that he couldn’t and that I couldn’t help him would frustrate him to no end. When The Husband was in the hospital sometimes we would have video conferences so The Boy could see him and they could have a “real” conversation, one night at dinner, The Husband was talking to him while he ate and all of a sudden The Boy throws down his fork and starts having the mother of all freak outs because he wants his Daddy to come out of the computer and be near him. I had no idea what to do, but seeing him like that broke my heart. After that little episode we banned video conferences for a while. The point is that in hindsight I realize that we could have and possibly should have handled the whole thing better, given The Boy more information, tried to protect him less from the facts and prepared him better for the reality. Of course, in hindsight it’s easy to see your mistakes, but when you’re actually living them you’re caught up by the craziness of it all and can’t think clearly. So now we are reaping what we sowed, unfortunately. I just hope that we haven’t traumatized him permanently…

Loss

Last Saturday we went to the saddest funeral I had ever been too, bar none, and that includes my own father’s funeral. Funerals are always sad, of course, and though I completely agree with the creole idea of celebrating life once you leave the cemetery, the reality is that the prevailing feelings at a funeral are those of loss, and grief and helplessness.  In this case, the prevailing feeling was probably also disbelief. The Husband’s cousin E was my age, 35, she had a 7 month old baby boy, a loving husband of just a few short years, a doting brother and parents who loved her more than anything. She was born and raised in the same small town as The Husband. To say the church was packed would be an understatement of massive proportions. All the seats were taken, and all the remaining space was standing room only. And everybody was distraught. I had only briefly met her once, and it was still heart wrenching. Her passing was completely unexpected, she had a brain tumor, her symptoms started less than a month ago, and she died a few days after the diagnosis. Enough said. As I was sitting in the church I looked at her parents and thought of their grief and I started praying for protection for my kids, please God don’t let this happen to them…. And then I thought, it’s not like E's mother didn’t have the exact same feelings as me, she must have thought and prayed the same way for her kids a hundred times, in fact all mothers pray that their kids grow old, happy and healthy and loved. So, really, what’s the point? Well, I know it sounds trite and unbelievably simplistic but I realized the following: we can really only count on the present moment, so we HAVE TO enjoy it and savor it, and be thankful for it, we don’t know what the future holds so we can’t put anything important off for later, be it a kiss, a hug, a trip, a conversation… so when The Boy asks me to play ball when I’m cooking dinner, I now decide it’s ok to eat ten minutes later and go play ball.

And then I looked at her husband, he was neither crying nor talking, he may not even really have been there. And I thought of all the plans they had, the hopes and dreams for their future, for their child and how now he has to navigate through it all alone. Alone with his baby. Having kids is hard enough as it is when there are two parents to carry the burden, and he has no one who is as invested as him to discuss things with, to share the good and the bad and the great.

It is unimaginably sad. The saddest part is that, as anyone who has lost someone knows, you never stop missing the person you lost. Grief does get easier to handle, it slowly passes and gives way to sadness and hopefully down the line to nostalgia. But still, for the rest of their lives, her husband, and brother and parents are going to think of her and wish she was there, and they will always be sad for the loss. And her son will always pine for the mother he never knew. And that is heartbreaking.

Here we go again

Thursday morning, we’re still tired from our little day trip, but we’ve decided to go spend the weekend in France so we’re going. The Husband starts the day at the hospital for the usual tests, plus a bone marrow test, and to get the go ahead from his doctors. I start the day by packing, and packing, and packing…. with no end in sight. Since The Husband had a treatment at the hospital at 2pm our plan was to leave at 2.30, so the kids could take their afternoon naps in the car. Ha, ha, ha.

This was our morning: The Husband gets up at seven and goes to the hospital. The kids and I get up at eight and are comatose until 9 anyway so we may as well have slept in. I start organizing stuff. The Husband comes home takes The Boy to daycare and comes back after having stopped at Auchan to buy a luggage rack to mount on the car roof cause there’s no way everything will fit in the car. Amidst much swearing the luggage rack gets mounted and The Husband heads back to Auchan to buy the luggage holder thingy (what is it called??) that goes on the luggage rack. After getting out clothes and other crap for myself and the two kids, piling them on the bed and promptly getting rid of half the stuff cause it won’t fit in the car anyway, I head to Toy Center to get a small travel stroller for The Boy that I had finally accumulated enough points to get for free. The Husband comes home and mounts the luggage thingy. I come home royally pissed because you have to pre-order the free strollers and it takes a month to get it, so I just wasted half an hour.

At this point it’s 2pm (how did that happen??) and The Husband heads back to the hospital, swearing up a storm cause he’s late, and only had a sandwich for lunch. We’ve already fought four times and cancelled the trip twice. The Boy somehow makes it home, but no one remembers how he got there… one of us must have picked him up. At this point I’m running around like a completely psycho dervish cause it’s late, the kids are tired and I have to pack for three people and load the car, and how the f@#k does this luggage thingy work, I can’t get anything in there. Then The Nanny gives me The Girl so she can go pack her stuff, and I promptly loose The Boy. Heart Attack. He was playing in the car, I’m still packing (how is that even possible??!!) I go check on him in the car and he’s gone. So I call, and call, and call…no answer. I freak out. I run upstairs, not there, I run back downstairs, not there, I run back upstairs…. All the while screaming his name. At some point The Nanny comes running and is looking for him too. And I run outside (how would he have gotten out, the gate was locked) and finally we find him… in the car… this whole scene must have taken at most 2 minutes. It felt like two hours, in slow motion. Obviously, I burst into tears… so did The Girl who was in my arms the whole time, experiencing  my meltdown in surround sound. The Boy looked at me like I was a complete moron. So I went back to packing. Finally after what felt like an eon I’m done packing. I load up the car. And I realize two things: I forgot to pack all the electronics, like we could leave for four days with no computers, phone chargers, sky card, internet key etc…. and The Husband hasn’t packed a damn thing. So I start packing again. The Husband comes home and yells at me. I tell him he can go to hell, I’m leaving with the kids and he can stay home. And FINALLY at four (almost two hours late) we’re in the car driving to the beach, all five of us, plus enough crap to survive the apocalypse.

Roadside dining and other news

Out of the blue on Wednesday we decided to take a little road trip and go visit Uncle F and Cousin R in Cap Martin, France. This little plan was hatched Tuesday evening, obviously The Husband and I weren’t thinking clearly… or rather, we were thinking like two adults with no children… which is definitely not the case. So Wednesday morning we get up and get ready to leave. Three hours later we’re all finally in the car, with not a little regret for the old days when we’d decide to go somewhere and in half an hour at most we were on our way.

This little trip was memorable for several reasons. First of all, it was The Girl’s first road trip, it was her first time out of the baby car seat and in a regular car seat (though still rear facing, which we’re not sure she really cares for), it was her first time out of the country, and consequently, her first time in France. On our way to France, we realized The Girl has no documents, though this realization was not enough to compel us to turn back (after all it took us three hours to get out of the damn house, we weren’t about to turn around and go home) we did experience a little trepidation in crossing the border with visions of being arrested for child smuggling. Thankfully, border controls are now a very rare exception. Note to self, go get her id done.

So anyway, at around 12.15 we were on the lookout for an Autogrill (typical Italian bar/restaurant/gas station/rest stop on the highway) so we could feed the kids (primary objective) and ourselves (if we had time) and at one of the little emergency stop areas along the road I see the following: a parked station wagon, between the car and the guard rail a couple is sitting at a little table, I really need to repeat that with emphasis, SITTING AT A TABLE, with two folding chairs and, I kid you not, a table cloth, surrounded by Tupperware, having lunch. They were having lunch, in the emergency lane of the highway. My mouth dropped open. As The Nanny said, they are a prime example of two people who HAVE TO have lunch at noon, wherever they may be. But what really gets me is they had one of those travel folding tables, the ones, I imagine, that contain the folding chairs so that when It’s closed it’s just a little formica square, and then when noon hits, you can brake into the emergency lane, unfold the table, pull out the legs, out pop two chairs, and voila’, roadside dining.

Now, most of you may not know this about me, but I love kits. I seriously love kits. And bags with compartments. If I buy a bag with compartments I compose my own kits. FOR EVERYTHING and anything. Let me explain. In my car, I have several emergency kits. The emergency diapering kit, kids have diarrhea, I finish the diapers in the diaper bag, no problem out comes the car emergency diapering kit. I have the change of clothes kit, with a change of clothes for the kids AND me. I have the medical emergency kit (which is a constant work in progress as I come up with yet another apocalyptic scenario to be prepared for), I have the “we’re stuck on the highway in a snow storm kit” containing among other things, water and crackers (this actually happened to a friend, who was stuck on the highway over night, literally ALL NIGHT). I could probably survive on just my car kits for about a week. So when I saw this middle aged couple fine dining on the highway, my first thought was, oh my gosh I need to buy a table and chairs and make a roadside dining kit. (And you thought I was normal!)

So we get to Cap Martin, with only minor meltdowns and a moderate amount of “are we there, can I get down, get down, get down, get downs”, and The Boy practically dives straight from his carseat into the pool. Needless to say, he had a blast. Obviously, our adult plans of a quick jaunt to the supermarket and a walk around Montecarlo were a pipe dream, our lives are now led by a two year old. So we spent the day in the pool and then we had dinner in Menton. After this fun filled, not at all tiring day, The Husband and I, in our infinite wisdom and good sense decide to return to Cap Martin for the weekend, and at this point why wait for Friday, there’ll be too much traffic, lets come back tomorrow. So what did this little day trip teach us? Well, when travelling with a toddler and a baby the only difference between a day trip and a long weekend is a couple of portable cribs and more diapers, so you might as well take the long weekend, cause a day trip is simply not worth it. So that’s what we did on Thursday. Are we crazy, you may ask. Possibly just a little addled from lack of sleep, would be the answer.