Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The delicate balancing act of mothering

Inspiration and time seem to have made their return at the same time.  Convenient, isn't it?  So, if I'm reading the stars correctly, this means my blog might just have some new posts on it this month!

Have you ever experienced utter amusement simultaneous with very sincere embarrassment? It was very unique, and even somewhat exhilarating, I must say.

The scene: a nice grill-out (with many people I didn't know) in a lovely park full of similar grill-outs.

I was getting something for Cate and had my back turned for about one minute from where Dominic was wandering around watching Italian children.  Suddenly I got the sense that everyone was looking in that direction.  I turn around to make sure it wasn't Dominic.  What do I see?  Dominic's bare bottom with pants around his knees, standing in front of a tree taking care of business no more than ten feet from our picnic.  To make matters even funnier, he was facing another group of picnickers. Again, no more than ten feet away.

For some reason, though, this struck me as utterly amusing. And yet, everyone was looking, waiting to see who the mother was that had such an indecent son.  So, while trying to hold my laughter in, and yet, feeling embarrassment in the center of my being, I went to retrieve retrieve my son and instruct him in the proper way to pee on a tree.  Thankfully, the people with the frontal view were amused. But really, how funny.  He had followed the right instructions.  He found a tree in a park.  I guess I had forgotten to instruct him to find a tree away from people. 

Friday, March 12, 2010

Photos from Florence, Siena, Pisa!


I uploaded over one hundred images and videos to our Picasa web album.  So, if you're interested in taking a look at them (I didn't embed it directly because I was afraid my blog would start uploading, as my dad would say, slower than molasses in January) just click on that blue link.  There are also pictures in there of a funny photo shoot of the kids dressed up... (Grandma and Grandpa brought them adorable Easter outfits, so we put them on early so they could see them).  We had a great time with Momma and Poppa Gaetano.  They rented an apartment in Florence for a week, and then we made day trips to Pisa and Siena.  The weather was crummy for all but one day (Pisa), but it didn't matter.  Just being together again made all of us very, very happy. So between our joy and frequent cups of cafe, we had a marvelous time.  Blog posts to begin again soon...