April 14, 2016

One year ago, I was pregnant (or thought I was), studying for the patente, and at war with my in-laws.
Two years ago, I was in New Jersey with a new baby and I was nervous about moving to Italy. Also excited.
Three years ago today, I was living in New York City, going to grad school, volunteering at a counseling center, working at Intermix, about to turn 40, and dating the hottest guy I'd ever met.
Four years ago, I was in my second semester of grad school and just starting to see the hottest guy I'd ever met. I'd never been so thin in all my life.
Today, Giovanni and I woke up together at around the usual time. He went to do yoga in the ingresso and I went to turn on the hot water for my coffee. I make my coffee with coffee filters mom put in a box and sent to me. I can't find them here in Italy. I then took my coffee and my itouch and went into the dark to listen to a 20-minute playlist of Italian mp3s I've made for myself. They do help my pronunciation. An old therapist told me I needed to meditate in the morning, or at least try, but that never worked much. I just had too much going on in my head. So I decided to try sitting in the dark listening to the mp3s while sipping coffee and that works really well. I don't know if it brings clarity but I enjoy it so much I do it every day.
After the playlist finishes, I tend to check the NY times online to see what's going on in the world. I'm really trying to cut back on my news ingestion because I fear it's making me anxious. I'm also doing a Facebook and twitter fast for April because I was doing too much comparing and despairing and trying to control everything. And it exhausted me. So I need to try to jettison that for awhile. So far, so good. The only thing I really miss is my expats in Italy Facebook group. I've found that's a great support network for me that I'm cut off from for now. But it's a huge time suck. And I have so many other things I could be doing.
I also need to train myself to check my whatsapp app on my iphone because I discovered yesterday a whole bunch of messages that I never got notified for.
Anna woke early this morning; typically I have to go in there and poke her around 7:30 but she was yelling for stuff starting at 7:00 am. She wasn't crying, just trying to get our attention from the crib. Maybe Giovanni had turned on the hall light. She cracks me up all the things she says. She's a little chatterbox. Like her mom.
I took my shower. Yesterday, I tried to wash my hair and realized, in total straniera move, I'd bought conditioner instead of shampoo. In frustration, I just threw the bottle away. I never use conditioner! I'm still making stupid mistakes like that which drives me crazy. A couple weeks ago, I'd bought a sweet cream LIKE ricotta instead of ricotta. So I made a very sweet lasagna that I didn't tell Giovanni what was wrong with it. And he didn't notice. Or if he did notice, he didn't mention it.
While I was getting dressed, Giovanni and Anna were playing with her toy cars. Anna saw me senza pants. She laughed and said, "Change your pants, mamma!" We're always changing her pants. She's very much in love with routine, which is very normal for a two-year-old.
This morning, I made her the oatmeal that I bought at the COOP in Rivoli with Melanie. I'd taken a list for the Auchan and tried to find all the things I wanted at the COOP and it was a no go. Instead of quick oats, all they had were slow-cooking oats. Ugh.
She's used to having a big bottle of warm milk in the morning, but I want her to have some food in her stomach before she goes to nido so she just doesn't spend all morning begging for food. Every time I pick her up, they tell me how she ate everything (tutto). Yep, that's my girl. She's a good eater. She took to daycare like a duck to water and I'm so glad she's seemingly having a good time.