Gledileg jol

This is probably going to be our last blog before christmas. This weekend we will pack half our belongings (or so it seems) and if there is still going to be some room left in our car, we'll fit ourselves in it and drive down to i nonni in Arezzo where we will stay until the new year.














We wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year. We thank you for the company this year and look forward to seeing you online (or better: offline and in person) next year
Big hugs from Oscar, Irene, Sergio & Rut

Amma Finna

Today it's one year since amma Finna left to explore other dimensions. Not a day has passed that she hasn't visited our thoughts, we find her presence and teaching in many of our doings, even where we least expect, and a little piece of her continues to live within our hearts.
We miss you...

Books and bugs

I often read books with mum. Well, sometimes we read, sometimes we just watch the pictures and mum tells me what is on them. One of the books we've read is called My first 500 words. It is a nice book with a a lot of nice pictures and colours, but I must say that that I'm a bit perplexed about the priority that the authors have when it comes to the words to learn. On the first page of the book (see picture) the authors list among others the following words: octopus, icecream, windmill, ghost, unicorn and crocodile. These are very useful words for a little baby, as you can imagine, and I can't wait to get the chance to use them!
But this weekend we were glad for having read this book, for at least I knew what a nurse was when I saw one at the hospital in Ponte San Pietro, where my parents brought me for a visit, as rather than sleeping friday night, I just cried out loud and insisted to be cuddle in my parents arms. We came back from that visit with the diagnosis ear infection, and a prescription for antibiotics.
If some of you wonder how a 3 months old baby can get an ear infection, then examine this picture of a little girl and her older brother who has just had ear infection, and guess what the big boy did to the little girl only seconds after the picture was taken. Yes you're right...he kissed her right on the mouth!

Christmas feeling

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Christmas is coming, and the clan of Ponte San Pietro would like to share with you their Christmas feeling.
Dance with us....

Frozen balls

It is not a good idea to poo when you find yourself at 1500m, there is a fresh -2°C breeze and you are in a place where there are no houses, your car is full of baby-seats and the only place available to change your diaper is the boot of the car...
But if you do find yourself in this situation, then ask your parents to park the car in a way that at least allows you to admire the great view while your balls are freezing!

The 10-lesson's day

Today me and mum had to run a little errand to Milano. We used the opportunity to learn a few important lessons.
When we had brought Oscar to kindergarten, me and mum rushed back home where I was breastfed and then we mounted in our car and drove off to Milano. The scheduled time of arrival according to our GPS was 9:50, and the appointment we had was at 10:15, so we thought we had a good margin. I used the opportunity to take a little extra nap, and the trip went very well...until we hit the Milano-ring-road, and that's where we learnt the first lesson: never assume that there is NOT going to be a terrible terrible traffic jam on the ring-road, even if you travel at an official off-rush-hour time! Mum called Mrs. Marzia from the jam to let her know we would be too late to our appointment! When we finally got off the ring road, it was time to take on the Milano-traffic. If the ring road was slow, then driving inside Milano is like trying to swim in Sahara. You get nowhere! When finally we started to approach our destination mum started to look for a parking place. Then it was time for lesson number two: never assume that you are going to be lucky and find a parking place when you badly need it. In the end, when we had less than 1 km to our destination, mum asked the GPS to indicate for us a parking-house. A few minutes later we parked in a supermarket about 800 m from our destination. That's where we learnt the third lesson: never assume that you are not going to get dis-orientated when you park in an underground car-park and exit from a different site than the one you entered! Mum was so sure she knew where she was going that she strolled off, with me in the kangaroo-bag towards our destination. Then she learnt the fourth lesson: don't wait -and walk- twenty minutes before asking directions when you were supposed to have parked 5 minutes away from your destination. The gentleman that my mum finally asked for directions hummed and coughed and waved the arms and gave directions that went to the east and the west and left and right and past that square and up that tree and turn at that shop and then to the left and the right.... So mum decided that she had wandered far too far off, and it would be best just to take a taxi and then she called Marzia to let her know that we would be even more late. Then she learnt the fifth lesson: don't think that you can call a taxi by just snapping fingers from the sidewalk, as they always do in the movies. After trying for a couple of minutes she gave up and we had to look for a taxi-queue. Once in the taxi the taxi-driver confirmed that we were far off the target, and that mum had actually parked the car very near our destination. Mum felt like a farmer in the city! Confused and tired. Finally the taxi driver dropped us off in front of Milano Court house. That's when we learnt the sixth lesson: don't think that arriving to your destination actually means you have arrived! First of all, one has to pass the metal detector, and line up in the metal-detector queue. Then the Milano Court house is like a middle-size icelandic village, let's say like Hveragerdi! They would do well by offering bicycles at the entrance so that you can hope to reach the other end of the house in decent time. The office we needed to go to was on 6th floor. We entered on 1st floor, walked several kilometers of corridors before we arrived to the elevator and then we learnt the seventh lesson: don't assume that the first elevator that arrives is going where you are going. The one we took was going down. First on ground floor, then on -1, and mum started to think that we might be going MUCH further down, as hell is supposed to be crowded with lawyers! Finally the elevator started, slowly, to rise again. Once we came to 6th floor we had to look for room 21. To the left rooms 23-48, to the right rooms 1-20. Then where the hell is 21? Finally we found the right room, and Marzia that had been so kind to wait for us, even if we were more than half an hour late to our appointment. Marzia had brought my mum's translation plus the original document and she had got the declaration that my mum had to fill out where she swore that she had translated the document faithfully. We queued up in front of room 21. When it was our turn, a tired old man, that probably exhaused all his smiles in 1973, told us that he could not accept documents (2x288 pages) that were not perfectly "bound"! Where can we do that? Ground floor! We ran down the stairs (no elevator thank you) and along miles and miles of corridors and found the indicated place. Closed. The guards could not tell us where the new place was, people passing couldn't. Finally we found the place and put ourselves in a long queue of lawyers, students, assistents and whatnot, that were there to fotocopy important documents. That's where we learnt lesson number eight: use the baby in the kangaroo-bag for what she is good for. A smile, a little cry and many: o che bella and we were miraculously the first ones in the queue. Yes they could bind our document...but not before the next day! Again mum and Marzia used me as a weapon and the lady promised to do it as soon as possible. When time passed and the lady just bissied herself with fotocopying all those documents, I was used once more, a little smile a little cry and the lady started preparing our documents. When thet were ready we rushed back all the corridors and hallways and motorways and narrow allays, jo-jo-ed a little with the elevator and once again we queued in front of room 21. The guy with the exhausted-smile accepted the documents (after veryifying that there were actually 25 lines per page...for a moment we thought he would count them on each and every one of the 288 pages). My mum signed the declaration (had to be done in front of that guy)..she was actually a bit disappointed, for she did not have to repeat the words aloud as well (as was written in the instructions)...she thought they would bring the bible and all, but no, just you sign here signora! Then it was time for the ninth lesson: don't think that it is all finished with the signature. Mum and Marzia had to impress with a stamp each and every page of the translation, and every marca da bollo (on every 4 pages). The next ten minutes it sounded as if an african tribe that was praying for rain had entered the court house...bomm bomm bomm bomm bomm (about 300 times...you get the picture!). And it's not finished yet. Mum had sworn that she had translated the document faithfully. Now this had to be legalized! Not in room 21 on 6th floor. NO, far to simple that way. Room 447 on 4th floor. Again we rushed down the stairs. But if you think that it is simple to find room 447 on 4th floor then try this_ When we had walked one floor down from 6th floor we arrived to 4/5 floor. Now WHAT does that mean? And as to make things more complicated we found a sign that said rooms 448-456 to the left, 418-445 to the right. Where does that leave room 447? I guess this is a kind of an intelligence test they do for the translators. WOuldn't it be better just to give them a treasure map with an X and then they can enjoy an orientation game as well! In the end we had to walk several more corridors, run down half a stair (that explains the 4/5 floor) and found a tired A4 sheet on a wall that indicated room 447. We half thought they didnt' want to be found by anyone (the tired look of the room and of the people in it let us think that maybe they hadn't found the way out for many many years). In room 447 it took some time to find out how things had to be done for Iceland (was there an agreement between the nations or not!) and then we were told that the legalization would be ready in 3 days! Please, can't you do it now, cried mum and Marzia! Then the tired lost people asked how we could think that arriving there 10 mintues before closing time could give us the possibility to have an exception to that good-old- 3 days rule (3 days is probaly the time it takes to forget the way to room 447 so you have to start all over again). Then it was once again time for me to step in...oh, but we have come all the way from Bergamo with a little baby (that is also getting hungry..bohooo) and can we not rush things a little bit. And as by a miracle we got the necessary signatures from the right person in less than 5 minutes. Why on earth does it have to take 3 days then? As we walked off we saw a lady that had brought documents to legalize for kazakstan, it had come up only the day before that she had to leave for kazakstan next sunday for some emergency (why else would you go there at this time of year), and she had to have some travel documts legalized. She was being told that she could TRY to come get the documents on friday, but they could not guarantee it. I guess these people just LIKE playing important or something.
Well, but OUR mission was done and just seconds before all the court-house workers were off for a long lunch. We said goodbye to Marzia and walked off to our car. Mum had asked the taxi-driver for directions before, and she surprised herself by remembering them despite her severe breastfeeding-fog. Luckily the supermarket was not closed during the siesta (as happens in italy and mum feared terribly) and soon we were off again in our car. That's where we got the tenth and last lesson of that day: don't get tempted to follow street signs, rather than the GPS, to exit a city. Instead of just going back via forlanini that heads straight to the ring-road, mum decided to follow some signs that led her all through the eastern part of Milano and towards the northern ring road (rather than the eastern part). Just before 2 o'clock we parked outside IKEA and finally I got to have my warm and wonderful milk. Then we stocked up with some IKEA-meat balls and IKEA-ginger-snaps and bought a couple of things we needed for the house, and then we finally drove back home, just in time to pick Oscar up again from kindergarten.

Stirring up the peacefulness

When mum is preparing Irene for bed: changing her diaper, putting her in pyjama, cleaning her nose, breastfeeding and putting her to bed, she tries to create a calming atmosphere. Mum breastfeeds in her room, sitting on the breastfeeding chair, the lights are low, and she puts some music on in my room so that I am more calm while playing by my self (when dad is not at home, otherwise me and dad have fun together) and it is as if there is an aura of peace in our house.......but only as long as I collaborate. Which I do most of the time. But sometimes I like to stir up in this aura, and then mum has to fight her own patience and try not to get provoked, for she doesn't want to transmit the "anger" that starts boiling in her, to Irene just before going to bed. If ever you find yourself in the same situation, here are some ideas of what you can do:

• Climb up on a rather unstable table in your room (your mum will understand from the sound, what you are doing) and recite some passages from "The three goats" with all appropriate changes of voice and shouting (when it comes to the part of the troll).
• Try to climb into your mum's arms and say me too....!
  
• Pretend that you are terribly terribly thirsty and cry for water. If your mum is prepared for such a request, and has put your glass of water e.g. in the living room, pretend not to see it and cry even louder.
• Place yourself where your mum can see you, then say poo... and pretend to have some bowel movements! Then walk as if what's in your diaper is bothering you!
  
• Pick up the telephone and dial a random number...then walk around the house saying pronto pronto, Nonno? Make sure never to get within arm's reach of your mum so that she cannot sequester your telephone!
  
• Push the button on the telephone that "calls the receiver". This will guarantee you a terribly annoying beepbeep sound for some minutes.
• Bring things to your mum! She will already have her hands full...of the baby, but if you smile and say please, she will not protest when you give her one piece of your construction kit after another! When she can no longer take more of them, just throw them over the breast-feeding pillow so that they will land on the baby! Remember that it is fundamental that you smile throughout this process, for it is impossible to get angry with a boy with a puppy-face!
• Move furniture! You could try with the telephone table for example. And remember that it is not your fault if the phone-wires are not long enough to arrive to the new destination and that eventually the telephone and the router will fall of the table making a loud noise! This is a good moment to start crying as if the table has betrayed you!
• Place yourself in front of the baby's bed, point at it and say nanna. Your mum will explain that soon the baby will go to bed and you will be able to play with mum. Then insist, raise your voice a couple of decibils and say NANNA. This is a great way to test your mum's patience. How many times is she going to repeat the same answer without allowing the angry tone to enter into play?
• Press the radio-button on the HiFi (especially if it is badly tuned as mine) and increase the volume. Guaranteed success!
  
• Open the CD player and take out the CD. Use it to make a funny sound when you scrape it along the walls in your room.
• Open the DVD-drawer in the living room, remove the DVDs one by one and then climb into the drawer and pretend you are on a boat!
• If you are so lucky that your mum forgot to close the kitchen- or bathroom-door or she has left a pen or the remote control for the TV in a place that you can reach, millions of amusing opportunities will reveal themselves to you.....!

Laughing

Yesterday Irene laughed out loud for the first time. This morning we woke up to a winter wonderland -everyting covered with a nice layer of snow.
A coincidence?

15 facts

When you don't blog for a while there is a lot to tell, so I've decided to copy Stina's idea and write 15 recent facts from the life of family Polselli-Valgardsdottir!

1. Irene is growing a lot. She is >60cm and almost 6kg. And she is a real bundle of joy. If my mum wasn't suspersitious she would tell you all about how great Irene is, how well she sleeps and how happy she is during her waking hours. But since my mum thinks that telling you about it might put an end to this happy era...she won't..!
2. Irene has become a smiling champion. She smiles when she sees mum, when she sees dad, when she sees Oscar, when she hears some music, when someone whistles, when we "shake her legs"...when...we'll if that isn't being a ray of sunshine...
3. Oscar speaks more and more every day. Little by little the pronounciation is also becoming clearar. Brrr-na-na has for example been substituted with moto-jol. But Yogurt continues to be Jussjuss, a spider is angalanga and there is a range of things that falls under the category santi/santa!
   
4. And more about talking. Oscar is good at keeping the two languages separate. There are certain words that he won't say in icelandic (such as thanks, come, water, go away) and certain words he wont say in italian. But in general he speaks italian with dad and icelandic with mum and does not mix the two languages.
5. The winter is definately arriving to Ponte San Pietro. It is getting colder every day, and mum hopes every morning to be able to announce the arrival of the first snow. She is curious to see Oscar's reactions, for he doesn't remember the snow from last year!
6. Christmas is also coming closer. As we live in the centre of our town, we can see how the shops are being decorated, lights have been set up above the main street (we pass there every day on the way to kindergarten) and they've started to make the presepe by the river, we'll show you a picture of it when it's ready. Mum has bought a poinsettia for our living room, and she thinks she might have to start buying christmas gifts soon if she doesn't want to challange too much the italian postal service by sending her parcels late around the world!!
   
7. Despite the fact that we live by the main road that crosses our town, there are not nearly enough Babu-babu passing our house with blinking lights and the sirens sounding. That's a real disappointment! Maybe we need more criminals in town?
8. When the first low pressure area of this autumn arrived, with loads and loads of rain (just as good that they hadn't started preparing the presepe, for it would have been swept away with the river that was at least double in size), Oscar mastered the pool-jumping technique. We sincererly think that he was the only one in town that greeted the 10th rainy day in a row with a big smile -and there wasn't a pool between our house and kindergarten that he didn't jump in.
9. Oscar's stomach has been nominated the 8th wonder of the world. For science can not explain how all that food that he eats can fit into the stomach of such a little boy. He often eats as much as mum and dad, even if he is not yet 2 years old. We wonder how much he will eat when is 4, or 8 or 12 years old. Maybe my parents need food-aid from the government to be able to satisfy his hunger!
10. It is always crowded at our dinner table. Even if physically there are only Oscar, mum and dad (if he's not away for work) present, plus Irene that watches from her cosy-chair, then it doesn't stop grandma, grandad, Kidda, Maria, Erla, Sara, Steina, Gudjon and...well literally everyone that has ever come to visit us, to join us at dinner every night. Oscar offers them very generously to eat from his plate...but in the end all the food finishes in his stomach. Which comes far to explain why he eats so much!
    
11. Breakfast is the meal with most fantasy in our household -maybe because we are so fresh after a good night sleep, or maybe because we eat so slowly and enjoy to chat during the meal. During one such meal a slice of bread can change from being just that, to be a train then a bus, then a car, then a motorbike, then a horse, then a dog, then a hen, then a ball, then the moon, then a star and then finito. Every bite changes the sculpture, and every new form is accompanied with the right sound. Never a dull moment!
    
12. Mum sometimes calls Irene "miss adaptable", for she has to adapt to the house's routine all the time. Maybe she is comfotably lying in her bed, dreaming about a wonderland where every hill and tree and house and street is a milk tank, when she is pulled out of it, dressed hurriedly and squeezed into the kangaroo-bag, for mum has to go to pick up Oscar, or go to the shop, or pick up the laundry or whatever!
13. Mum has not got a very good eye for shoe-size. When the cold weather arrived she went to the garage to get Oscar's old boots -from last winter- that are becoming far too small. But as Oscar didn't complain (even if an X-ray of his feet might have revealed that his toes were bent in the boots) and as mum was very busy translating and didn't have time to go and buy new ones, he used them for a few weeks. The day mum finished her project she went to buy a new pair, but either she miscalculated how fast Oscar's feet are growing, or she is aiming at a national prize in parsimony (buying things that will fit Oscar in a near future), for she bought boots that are so big that they could serve as a winter-home for a whole family of mice. A real pair of 7 miles boots. But they sure do effect when Oscar does his pool-jumping!
14. Oscar is always inventing new games. One of his latest inventions is the go to bed game. Where he lies down on the floor with a blanket, and pretends to go to sleep. Recently he added a new effect to this game. The object in the mouth. Never having used one himself, the pacifier was a real mistery to him when he saw his friends stuffing them into their mouth before going to nanna at the kindergarten. But the kids sure looked content with it, so Oscar decided that he should give it a go himself. Here you can see Oscar fitting a piece from his construction kit in his mouth while playing the go to bed game. Well, actually hefound it slightly strange, and soon gave up on it and declared that he couldn't understand what all the fuzz was about!
15. Every town in italy that wants to be noticed by the outside world has got a tower...or two. In Ponte San Pietro there was none, except for the church-tower, until the family Poselli-Valgardsdottir came to town.Then people started noticing a human tower moving around town, that consisted of mum or dad with Irene in front and Oscar on the shoulders. When it's raining, and mum brings Oscar to kindergarten, she doesn't want him to become all wet from pool-jumping (leaving such wonderful activity for the way home in the afternoon), so she has to rescue him from the street, and put him on his shoulder, and then the tower becomes complete with a lovely umbrella on top!
    

And that was 15! Hope you have a great weekend :)

Sprinting the 100 meters

For good results on the sprinting track, it's best to be well prepared. The more and better you train yourself, the faster you can go and the better your time is going to be. But you need more than training to get good results. If you, e.g. sprain your ankle midway through the run, or have a graceous fall a la Merelene Ottey, you are not going to be able to complete the run in an acceptable time - and maybe you are not going to complete it at all. Furthermore, if the there is a northern gale blowing right in your face, you know that the race is going to be all uphill. But no matter what the atmospheric conditions are, and no matter how well or badly you are trained, once you are in the start-blocks you automatically start to hold your breath, your eyes are focused on the track in front of you and you start to concentrate on the job you have in front of you. Then there is the B of the bang andyou exhale, extend the whole body so there is a straight line through the head, spine and extended rear leg - body approx. 45 to 60 degree angle to the ground. You keep your eyes focused on the track just in front of you, keep low and relaxed and then run (but not step or jump) out of the block. Once you're off you continue to keep your eyes focused on the track and keep the body low to allow the build up of speed. As you proceed you keep the whole body in a forward lean, with a straight line through the head, spine and extended rear legs. You start fast leg action, using a good stride length allowing continual acceleration. Of course it is also important to have the appearance of being smooth and relaxed but driving hard with elbows and legs (right!). If you are following well the description, then what comes to your mind is approximately what you see on this picture.
Now cancel the image you have of the perfect athlete, and substitute it with someone that is completely out of shape. Someone that actually hasn't run the 100 meters before, EVER!!! Then imagine that instead of maintaining the drive for approx. 20-30 metres and then letting the whole body slowly come into a high tall action, this out-of-shape-never-run-the-100m person keeps the drive for approximately 100 meters, only allowing himself to relax a little bit on the last few meters. If you can develope this picture in your brain: an out of shape athlete that is running the 100m with the whole body in forward lean, keeping the eyes fixed on the track, not allowing himself to look at other runners, the crowd that is cheering or, let alone, the finishing line...then you've more or less got the picture of my mum the past two weeks. If you then change the 100m track with 168 pages of legal text (a summon) in Italian that had to be translated into Icelandic during the race, then the picture becomes more clear to you. Lastly, if you substitue the stadium into a 3 room flat in Ponte San Pietro, and the crowd into 2 little children and a husband, then the picture is more or less complete. Luckily there were no misfortunes during the race (the kids kept healthy...fingers crossed that this continues for a good while), and the wind did not blow too strongly against the runner, and despite quite a few extinct italian words that needed to be tamed during the sprint, it all went quite well in the end. The thrill of the race is over by now. The job has been completed, the finishing line on the 100m track has been passed (a part from having to legalize the translation at the courthouse next week), and the un-ambitious icelandic housewife can focus again on dusting, hoovering etc. and maybe write a blog or two if she's up to it!

Back soon...

We're not gone, we're just on a break...for mum is very very busy these days taming extinct italian words and searching for the longest and most complicated sentence thinkable in the italian language. The best part is that she gets paid for it ;)
We'll be back. Big hugs, Oscar & Irene

Irene Bella

A couple of days ago me and my mum were watching my sister Irene as she was playing in the baby-gym. Here is the conversation I had with my mum while watching:
-Irene bella, I said and looked at my mum
-Jà Irene er falleg stelpa (yes, Irene is a beautiful girl) said my mum and smiled at me
-Irene bella, I repeated and looked again at my mum.
-Si, Irene è bella, Irene er falleg, said my mum and smiled, finding my comments rather cute
-Irene BELLA, I said once again and this time I stared at Irene
-Si, Irene bella, said my mum and started to be tired of the repetitive nature of the conversation
-Irene BELLA, I said for one last time -and if it wasn't for the fact that my mum was a goal-keeper in her youth and still preserves the good reflex necessary to keep the goal clean, then my hand would have hit Irene straight on her head. Instead my mum grabbed my hand and so prevented a small disaster happening. My mum was about to scold me, but right then it dawned on her that she had actually given me the permission to hit Irene. I had not been talking to my mum in italian, as she thought, but had repeatedly said Irene berja (hit irene) -and that was just what I intended to do!

Time

Last Sunday somebody moved one hour of daylight from the evening to the morning here in Italy. I don't know who is responsible for this magic trick, but this way the people of Italy save 99 millions of Euros (646 milions kwh of electricity), the newspapers say. I doubt that this is true, for I've checked the pocket of my pants, and they are just as empty as usually!
For me, this trick with the light has one immediate consequence: it gets dark long before I've exhausted my energy at the playground in the afternoon. How can I be happy with a few cents extra in my pocket when I'm forced to either play in the dark or go right home after kindergarten?
Mum says things are going to get worse. Soon it will still be dark when I go to kindergarten, and it will be dark already when I go back home in the afternoon. This makes absoloutely no sense to me! What does the government think about the fact that there will be no daylight left for me to enjoy a walk in the city or a visit to the playground when I've finished kindergarten in the afternoon? The millions of euros saved now will have to be used for depressive medicine later, when a whole generation of daylight-prived children become adults.
Therefore I suggest an immediate change. Instead of bothering with moving one hour of daylight from the evening to the morning, why don't we move several hours of daylight from the morning to the afternoon. It would be as if the whole nation had taken an intercontinental flight during the night, and woken up in a different time zone! The effect would be that during winter it would be dark, lets say until lunch (italian lunch, around 1-2), and then we can let daylight come and stay with us until it's time to go to bed. That way the sun will shine on us during the hours in which we can actually enjoy a few rays of sun!
When I become a prime minister....

liberal or conservative or just opportunist!

No, I'm not going to blog about politics....I was just wondering, as sometimes happens, about things. Well, when Oscar was a newborn baby, ages ago -it seems, people that saw him outside with my mum used to say: what a beautiful little girl you have! And every time, my mum had to correct them and say: well actually it is a boy! Sometimes my mum made a point of dressing him all blue (quite difficult, for his wardrobe contained very few blue clothes), and STILL people of the street would compliment my mum on her beautiful little girl and then just excuse themselves when they found out Oscar was a boy, saying: nowadays people dress their babies in any colour so it's impossible to guess their sex by the colour they are wearing!
So, when I was born and my parents were faced with either buying a whole new wardrobe of clothes for me, or just re-use Oscar's clothes, even if they were "boy-clothes", they had no difficulty making the choice. We are liberal, people (it seems) are liberal, and whatif our little girl is dressed once in a while in something very boyish, they thought! And what is the result? Now that we walk the streets of PsP, me wearing the same clothes that gained Oscar the girlish comments: people compliment my mum continuously on her beautiful little boy! And when my mum correct them and tell them that I'm actually a girl, they excuse themselves and say: well, dressed in blue I just thought it was a boy!
Either the people of the Bergamo province are much more conservative when it comes to infant-dress-colour-code, than the people of Pavia (where Oscar passed his infant months) or people in general are opportunist that excuse themselves with liberal or conservative slogans depending on what comes in handy for them!
Maybe my mum should knit me a hat that says: My name is Irene and I'm a girl!

The third language

I'm very busy these days learning to talk. This is no minor task, as I have to learn two languages with relatively complicated grammar and a pronounciation that goes beyond everything I could imagine coming out of my throat!

My main study-strategy is to listen and repeat! First I started by repeating the last word (or a fraction of a word) that my parents said:
Buon appetito
-tito
Hvað ertu að borða?
-borða
-Skamm Oscar, ekki berja Irene, þù àtt að vera gòður
-gòður
You get my point. My parents make a point of varying the last word so that I can learn as much as possible. It would of course be disastrous for my learning technique if they always said "Oscar" in the end of every sentence:
-You have to show Irene your love, Oscar.
-Did you see the moon, Oscar?
-Life is wonderful, Oscar
In this case, I would have learnt only to say Oscar 3 times, but would have had great difficulty to express my love for the wonderful moon!
Little by little I'm adding to the length of the repeated part, and yesterday e.g. I managed to repeat: það mà ekki klessa à hurðina.
I've also started to separate the two languages. For example I wouldn't dream of saying the colour of things to my dad in Icelandic or to my mum in Italian, and there are more and more words that I know in both languages, such as the name of differnt pieces of clothes, bodyparts, food items and so on. My vocabulary is growing every day, and I love to talk to my parents about various things. Yesterday over dinner e.g. we discussed who had poo'ed already and who hadn't, that was funny! But I also like to give a speech about various things and to talk on the telephone. And before going to sleep I catch up on things with my good friends Badda (bjalla) and Santi (bangsi) and sometimes I tell them also a go to bed story. I know how to change my voice so as to represent various persons, e.g. a troll and a goat and I invent stories as I go along. Sometimes the storytelling can go out of hand and my parents have to come and hush on me so that I don't wake up the whole neighbourhood with my monologues.

Actually my mum says that rather than me learning 2 languages she's struggling to learn the 3rd language of the house...my language! This is because my pronounciation is not very accurate. I follow the rule that as long as I get understood I don't polish the pronounciation part. Therefore, BANGSI becomes santi, and DANSA becomes santa, even if I have no problems pronouncing neither BA nor DA. This is ok as long as I keep the context clear, but as soon as I start to talk about DOS outside of the kitchen, or LALLO when we're in the car my mum has difficulty to understand that I'd like to have some cheese (ost) or that I'd just seen a horse (cavallo). But as long as our town is not full of cows or balloons, and that no one except me and her understand icelandic, she's happy. For imagine my mum's face if I went around town saying tussa (=kusa=cow) or bloddy (=loftbelgur=balloon) all the time!

A thought

Why does nature provide us with arms that can reach our buttocks before we are old enough to wipe our butts ourselves after pooing? Maybe it was meant as a joke, but my parents don't find it even slightly funny! They would also like to add that this thoughtless speed of arm-length-growth that nature has programmed in the human being creates a major challange during diaper change. But then again, nature probably didn't take diaper change into account when it was designing us!!

How to become the owner of a tricycle

There are several ways to become a happy owner of a tricycle. Some of them are simple, others are more complicated and risky. I will list some of these possibilities here, and guarantee that if you try them all, you will be able to get your parents to buy you one!

1. If you're lucky, you have parents that think that learning to ride a tricycle is an important developmental milestone, and so in due time, they will, without any outside stimulation, go and buy you a tricycle. I thought I was that lucky, but somehow my parents never got around to buying me one, despite several declaration in that sense, and so that tricycle never showed up.

2. You can ask your parents directly to have a tricycle. But if your vocabulary is limited as is often the case for children of the tricycle-age, it may be difficult to get them to understand what you want. In my case, BrrrNaNa Odda (in a simple translation: Could you please be so kind to give a bike to Oscar), did not work on my mentally retarded parents. Despite me repeating this a million times, they never seemed to understand what I meant!

3. You can become a big bike and motorbike fan and hope that your parents indulge you and buy a tricycle to further stimulate your passion for moving objects. In my case my parents indulged my passion by buying me cheap, tiny, bad-quality motorbike replica that have had to be replaced 2 times already because they fall a part when the demon on my shoulder has encouraged me to throw it on the floor!

4. Every time you go to the playground and there are children there that bring their tricycle and bicycles, you should get to try them. Once you're on the bike you should go straight home with it. In my case, every time I sat on some other kid's tricycle and said to my mum heim, heim (home), she lacked the courage to help me bringing it home, instead she just helped me going around the playground on it. Coward!

5. You can make your own tricycle, using any moving object in your possession, hoping to send a signal to your parents that it's time to buy that much desired tricycle. In my case I used a train that has the function of toddler walker (you know, the thing that helps you learn to walk), and sat on it, as if it was a tricycle (as you can see on this picture). But my parents just thought, why buy a tricycle when Oscar found a way to make his own using his fantasy!

6. This adivece is the same as above, but with a little modification to help in case your parents are as mentally retarded, and as slow to understand things as mine are. You make your own tricycle, using any moving object in your possession, and then you have a minor accident (and here lies the difficulty, you wouldn't want to have a major accident would you?) with it, and so send the signal to your parents that despite the great fantasy of your child, that can make a tricycle out of almost anything, it's now time that they buy you one! In my case it took a graceful front-fall right on the spot where the picture above was taken (and only a few minutes later actually), a broken tooth and a lot of blood coming from wounded lips, to open my parents eyes. THEN, finally, they went to buy me that much desired tricycle (and the train disappeared misteriously at the same time). Now I'm the happiest boy under the sun.


Next I'll give you some advice on how to get your parents to buy you a horse...this is a project that I'm still working on!

Wife and cattle from your own village

Moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi!
This is an old italian proverb, or maybe more an advice to the italian man: that he should, for his own best, choose his wife and cattle from his own village. Why on earth should he, you may ask, and so did my mum when she first heard this proverb (and wondered why my dad had ignored this simple advice and chosen a wife from a icy volcanoe island far far away). But recently it dawned on my mum that whichever the original meaning was, there is now a new interpretation.

In Italy, only SIX % of babies aged 0-3 years have access to kindergartens run by the city or town administrations (compared to 64% in Denmark!). There are, of course, also private kindergartens, but what they all have in common is that they are quite expensive, and since salary in Italy is not very high, not everyone can afford sending their children to a kindergarten. Therefore, if you cannot afford the kindergarten you have three possibilities: you opt not to have children; one of the parents stays at home with the baby the first 3 years (if you can afford to live on one income only); or you chose your wife from your own village. It goes on to say that it would be useless to chose the wife from your own village if you then chose to abandon the village for greener fields somewhere else -at least if you want to follow the old proverb in its new interpretation! This is because the biggest treasure for italian parents is i nonni -the grandparents, that step in when the state and local administrations fail to fulfill their educational role. The nonni have become the prime childcare-giver in Italy! This is obvious to you if you go to a playground or walk the streets of a town during the day, e.g. here in Ponte San Pietro, as I do almost daily with my parents. One hardly ever sees parents with their kids!! The only babies that one sees are accompanied by their grandparents (another possibility is that parents in italy are THAT old...but I don't think so). Luckily in Italy, the grandparents retire relatively early and are also relatively healthy (thanks to the mediterranean diet???). And luckily they're also kind enough to set aside their plans to enjoy old age with travelling, attending their hobbies or whatever they've set their mind to, to become almost parents for the second time. This is also one reason for why it has been difficult for us to get to know other parents here in our new hometown. We know a lot of grandparents, basically there isn't a person over 60 years in this town that doesn't greet us, or start chatting with us, on the street, but the younger generation is almost completely missing from our circle of aquaintence.

To sum up: if you chose your wife from your own village, and then don't move away from that village, chances are that you have two sets of grandparents to take care of your little ones. But what then about the cattle?

A future rascal

Mum says I'm a future rascal!
This morning my mum had an appointment with the gynecologist to check if her uterus and all was ok after the birth. My mum is pathologically punctual and arrived at 10 o'clock, although the appointment was only at 10.15, but the doctor was nowhere to be seen so she just sat down in the waiting room and started staring at the walls...or something. The midwife that is normally also at these appointments passed occasionally (and with increasingly obvious embarassment) in the waiting room to let the growing number of pregnant women, new-mums, fathers and other accompanying persons know that the doctor was late, but that he would soon be with us. And so the time passed, and me, little Irene, who had been happily sleeping in the pram the first 45 minutes of this wait, soon got enough and started complaining so my mum had to pick me up and walk me around the waiting room and the hall to keep me good. At 11.30 the doctor was still not there, and my mum considered going home, but then the midwife passed one more time in the waiting room to say that the doctor had called to let know that he would be with us in 10 minutes, so she decided to stay on. But the two of us made an agreement! I was to be quiet and good as long as we would stay in the waiting room (so that the people, that were getting just as frustrated and angry as my mum was, would not be irritated to have a crying newborn baby there with them) but as soon as I would enter the doctor's room, I was to show how good I was at high-pitch, insistent, irritating, nerve-wracking screaming. My mum said it was a much better message to the lack-of-respect-to-his-patients doctor, than if she would have complained with him directly. And so, when the doctor finally showed up, and it was finally my mum's turn (she was the 2nd patient in line) I cleared my throat and as we entered the doctor's office I started a constant 85 decibel chorus, with a numerous dangerous-for-your-ears 115 decibel pitches at critical moments. My mum smiled through it all, as if I was sleeping through the appointment (the estivill-training has not been for nothing!), but the doctor (who did not even excuse how late he was) was not so amused.
-The baby is, eh, well signora?
-Yes, doctor, healthy as a horse, just tired of staying almost 2 hours in the waiting room!
Boom, smack, slap in the face...don't you dare being late again dottore if my mum has an appointment!

When we left the doctor's office I stopped the crying and me and my mum smiled to each other in a mutual satisfaction with a mission well accomplished. Then we walked together into the beautiful autumn day!

Angels and demons

On my right shoulder, there is a little angel. He whispers to me advices on how to be a good boy. He tells me to kiss Irene or touch her gently when she is crying, he tells me to obey my parents, to treat well my toys, to eat my food and so on. This is a nice angel, and when I listen to him, my parents are very happy and say that I'm a little angel myself! The only problem is that sometimes I can't hear him, for on my left shoulder there is a little demon that shouts louder than the angel, and jumps up and down until I do like he says I should do. He tells me to hit Irene (best of all if it's on the head, he says), he tells me not to listen to my parents, never to mind if my toys get broken by my bad treatment, only to eat my food if they're among my top five favourites (the rest is best thrown on the floor) and so on. When I do like the demon tells me to do, the little angel sits down on my shoulder and cries unhappily. Then my parents tell me that they think there is a destructive force in me (especially when I feel forced to hit my little sister repeatedly on the head). Sometimes I have to physically remove the demon. I pick him up by the tail and throw him into the darkest corner of our house -just as he has told me to do with my toys. Then he stays away for some days, but he always finds his way back eventually, skinny and weak, as if he is driven by hunger which he can only calm by feeding on my bad behaviour! Luckily the angel never gives up on me, and continues to whisper his good advice in my ears even when I can't hear him at all. And luckily my parents don't give up on me either, for they know that parent's love is like a poison for little demons, so slowly we are killing the demon with my good behaviour and the love of my parents.