il anno secondo {the second year}

life is just beautifully, wonderfully, crazily crazy. two years ago i never would have dreamed that we would be contemplating moving to Rome for a year. and when we arrived in our own little apartment here in August 2018, my days were so filled with figuring out how to use the Italian dryer or how to ride the bus or how to communicate with the grocery store clerks that i didn't have the mental space to contemplate coming back for another year. and yet our expat friends all wisely assured us that the first year is the hardest and we should stay at least two (if not five!) years to make the most of the experience.

well, at this point we are taking it one year at a time, but comparing this August to last August, i know it was the right decision to come back. we spent the last six weeks in the States, and it was so wonderful. Pittsburgh is home home, and the Steel City welcomes us back with open arms every time we return.

possibly my favorite picture of Kira, Auntie Extraordinaire!

a walk with Auntie Kelli!

swimming lessons with Nana

...and with Aunt Becca!

still, this summer was emotionally complicated for me especially, as my sweet Gramps passed away in July and i spent the better part of the month in Boston, both to be with him in his last days and then after his death, to be with family for his wake and memorial service. i am so grateful that we flew back to the States when we did so that i could be there. the days and nights spent by his bedside are moments i will treasure forever: listening to his records or to Auntie Kris reading a biography of General Patton aloud to him (his request), helping him brush his teeth, administering his medicine, laughing at the cuckoo clock that always seemed to be chiming in at just the right moment in a conversation, adjusting his blankets just so with his feet sticking out the way he liked them, feeding him Jell-O slowly so he wouldn't choke and then getting the eyebrow waggle from him because i wasn't giving it to him fast enough. and his memorial service was absolutely beautiful, a fitting tribute for a man who touched so many lives as a father, grandfather, music teacher and musician. my extended family is hilarious, fiercely loyal, and capable of carrying on 15 conversations at once (which i absolutely adore). if it hadn't been for Gramps' passing, i'm sure i wouldn't have seen them this trip, and that is another gift i will carry with me.

does he not have the absolute best smile?!

soaking up every moment with him during a special weekend in April

this picture says it all. he could barely speak but he was still holding on to my arm.
Gramps, you are just the best. 

the youngest generation is now experiencing the cuckoo clock for the first time.
it gave me goosebumps to see how they both immediately ran over when they heard it cuckoo,
and watched the little wooden dancers spin around to the music -- just like i used to as a kid. (also, props to Auntie Kira for hoisting them both up at the same time so they could see!)

family shenanigans

crazy cousins after the memorial service. this was BEFORE we all drank a Manhattan in Gramps' honor,
so that pretty much tells you all you need to know.

because of all of this, though, our six weeks in Pittsburgh essentially turned into three weeks. i had to re-frame and readjust my expectations and plans for the time we had left. i absolutely would not change the fact that i spent so much time in Boston, but i do wish we had another few weeks of summer break to re-connect with everyone! but i suppose this is what one calls adulting. and i'm so grateful for the time we did have with friends. you know we have a guest room in Rome with your name on it if you haven't yet made it over here to see us! or even if you have. we'd love to have anyone and everyone!

the past two days really flew by as we were busy packing up the things to bring back to Rome (Ranch dressing and crunchy peanut butter ranking high on the list) and moving furniture back into our house to prepare for our new tenants (wonderful friends of ours!). the girls stayed with Nana and Pappy on Saturday night which was a huge help. i realized just how much of a help it was after i picked them up on Sunday evening and was continuing to pack, only to find that items in my carefully sorted piles kept disappearing... but we managed to get everything together, the last bags of food in the fridge and freezer dropped off at our neighbors' houses, house vacuumed, laundry done, the last remnants of kids' toys swept out of closets (i think!!) and were all loaded onto the airport shuttle at precisely 1:07 PM. this was even more of an accomplishment because i had booked the shuttle to pick us up at 1:20 PM and boy, 13 minutes can make a huge difference. the shuttle driver called and asked if we could be ready earlier and i basically told him "we can try but definitely no earlier than 1 PM!"  so of course he shows up at 12:53 PM with another passenger in the shuttle and so we spent the next fifteen minutes flying around finishing things up. thankfully, this time around, Nick and i actually showered in the morning and i had our suitcases actually packed and lined up by the door, so it was a much less chaotic experience than last August when we had purposely waited to shower until the end of our day of packing and moving, then -- shocker! -- ran out of time so both had to throw off our sweaty clothes and chuck them in a garbage bag in the garage, put on some clean clothes and apply three layers of deodorant while the shuttle waited outside. and i'm especially pleased with my Target purchase of portable booster seats that fold to a large wallet size (!), so we could safely transport the girls to the airport without lugging their huge carseats with us. i was getting Cece into the shuttle when the driver said "do you have a seat for her?" and i was all like oh yes i do and it's going to fit in my purse when we get to the airport. 

so we got there with lots of time to spare, rearranged our suitcases so that one had 49 pounds and one had 48.5 pounds, and checked in at the desk. the agent asked if we had visas for Italy and i pulled out our permesso di soggiorno cards. he squinted at them and said, "i don't see an expiration date on here. do you know what the expiration date is?"

and then i had one of those crazy linguistic moments where i looked at the card and read it as if i were reading English. i saw the tiny printed line "valido fino al 21.02.2021" and instantaneously thought "valid until February 21st, 2021" without consciously translating the words or the date format in my head. i know that's pretty intuitive in context, but it was still cool to realize that my neurons are actually making some new connections! brain plasticity for the win!

anyway, he got us all checked in with boarding passes issued for both flights (Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, then Philadelphia to Rome). we waltzed through security and arrived in the main terminal area to discover a jazz singer and her band performing, while two people in pierogi costumes were handing out smiley cookies! those are both huge Pittsburgh traditions, as the Pittsburgh Pirates games involve seven pierogis racing around the bases between innings, and the hometown restaurant Eat'n'Park is famous for its smiley cookies. it was a great way to say goodbye to Pittsburgh!

sorry Nick... but i just had to capture a photo of these two sleeping beauties...

all went swimmingly with our first flight. we had plenty of time to make it to our gate in Philadelphia for the next flight out. i checked our tickets and realized that we had 3 seats together and one in the row behind, so i figured we could just ask someone to switch with us when we got on the plane. then, when the agent scanned our boarding passes at the gate, the reader made a very unpleasant error noise and flashed a red light. she tried again, and... nothing. "it says this ticket isn't valid for boarding," she frowned at her computer monitor. then she scrutinized the actual boarding pass, which had all the right information on it. then back to the computer monitor, where she entered our names and frowned again. "you're not anywhere in our records."

okay, seriously?! how could something happen to our reservation in the four hours between when we checked in at the Pittsburgh airport and now? but thankfully, they had seats available on the plane. the only catch was that one seat was in row 15 and the other three were in row 41. woof. i took one for the team and opted to sit with the girls. as we were getting settled into our seats, i went to put our passports back into the cloth passport holder that Lish gave us last year (best gift ever!). annnnd it wasn't in my purse, or in the girls' backpacks, or in the seat back pocket. i remembered setting it down at the boarding podium while the agent was issuing us our new tickets, and couldn't imagine that i would have left it there -- but i also couldn't specifically remember picking it up again. my first thought was, "oh well, if i left it, it only has our luggage claim tickets in it so it's not a huge deal." my second thought was "HOLY CRAP IT HAS OUR PERMESSO CARDS IN IT!!!!!" which is a really, really huge deal. (i did have photocopies of the permesso cards safe in another pocket of my purse, but still!) so i told the girls to stay right where they were and walked up to the front of the plane to ask Nick if he had the passport holder. the moment he shook his head no, my heart started pounding and i strode up to the front of the plane just as one of the flight attendants paged "Will family! Will family!" over the PA system. sure enough, i had left the passport holder at the desk and one of the agents had brought it down the jetway! in my haste to take it, i dropped all of our new and old boarding passes all over the floor. the flight attendant immediately bent down to pick them up and said, "it's okay! you're all right!" haha. i must have looked panicked. i double checked that all four cards were still in the holder and we were good to go! seriously, i am so grateful that someone noticed it sitting there on the desk, and also that i didn't just shove the passports in my purse and thought to look for it before the plane took off!

after that, the flight was a piece of cake. the girls were fantastic the whole time. they both watched an insane amount of Fancy Nancy on the seatback screens, while i watched Tolkien and Family (both good!). they fell asleep about halfway through the 8 1/2 hour flight and as we disembarked in Rome, this whole flying across the ocean thing felt like no big deal. and to make things even easier, the NAC sent a car to pick us up -- the same driver we've had before, who smiled from ear to ear the entire time he was pushing our luggage cart, only pausing to show us a picture of his nephews eating gigantic carrots. "sono come conigli!" said Nick. ("they are like rabbits!") and he burst out laughing, "sì, sì. ti piacciono le carote?" asking the girls if they liked carrots. "sì, sì, sì," we laughed back.

i couldn't help comparing this experience to our arrival in Rome last year, after getting stuck in a non-air-conditioned terminal at the Frankfurt airport for five hours due to a presumed security threat, in a literal horde of people (at one point they had security guards passing out water bottles into the crowd because people were on the verge of overheating -- it was nuts). then we finally made it to Rome only to find that our bags didn't. thankfully one of the faculty priests had come along with the Italian driver to pick us up, so they helped Nick talk to the airport personnel and made a plan that we would all just go to the NAC and the driver would take Nick back to the airport the next day to pick up our bags (assuming they would arrive by then). which they did, and it was all fine, but still!

this year, as we rode along in the van, i was a bit worried about how Greta would feel as she dealt with the reality of coming back to Rome. she said a few times this summer that she didn't want to come back -- she misses her friends and family and our car and her bed and her bicycle and the purple slushies at Sheetz. i certainly can't argue with any of that! we talked about it a bit on the flight from Pittsburgh to Philly and i just said i know it's so hard to leave Pittsburgh, and Mommy and Daddy miss it too. so i was especially heartened when she excitedly started pointing out landmarks as we approached the college. and when she spotted the yellow wall surrounding our gate, she shouted, "there's our house!" she and Cece waved excitedly to the porter, then hopped out of the car and ran up to our apartment. when we unlocked the door, they both jumped onto the couch and sat looking at their bookshelf and their toys for a minute. "oh, our own little home!" said Greta. and it is our own little home, and i'm glad to be back!

they painted three separate times yesterday. these watercolors wipe off like magic!

baby gecko on the wall! it's hard to tell in this picture but it was about the size of my pinky. super cute.
but it's not there anymore, and i have no idea if it made its way out somehow or if we'll find it in the house again!

we all napped in the afternoon (having landed at 9 AM, which is 3 AM Eastern time), and then i made a grocery run to Carrefour. this was the first grocery store i scoped out last year, and i remember feeling like the 15 minute walk took forever. well, now i typically walk 25 minutes to the Todi's (a good selection with much better prices -- just like my beloved Aldi), so a little stroll to Carrefour feels like a super short trip! despite feeling pretty well-adjusted from our travels, i decided to forego actual cooking for dinner and picked up a couple of frozen pizzas. let me tell you, even the frozen pizza in Italy is delicious.

this little collection of votives (thank offerings) is a tribute to Mary. i pass it on the way to the grocery store.

i've never seen this flower stand empty before! like a majority of Roman businesses, it's closed for
holidays over the month of August.

ta-da! it's surprisingly fresh-tasting.

so we're back. bring it on, year two -- we're ready for you!