melted smoosh

um, hi. we are on the last full day of our 14-day voluntary self-quarantine after returning to the US from Rome. and as we have spent the past two weeks hunkered down without stepping outside, relying on our fantastic friends and family to deliver groceries to us, we have watched the insanity continue to mount around us. it's hard to believe that my post about Lenten observances in Italy was written within this same month, let alone in the same year. like pretty much everybody else i know, our world has been turned upside down by the COVID-19 virus and it's difficult to imagine a time when we didn't know it was coming. but we didn't. at least, we didn't anticipate how directly it would impact our lives. i remember specifically the day that i first heard the NPR Up First news summary podcast mentioning the outbreak in Wuhan. the podcast was released on January 21, and described "international concern" over this new virus. i listened to it on Friday, J

well, now that the world has gone completely crazy over COVID-19, i'd imagine a lot more of us are looking for some good books to read! here's what i read in February.   1) I Capture the Castle , by Dodie Smith. never have i read a book that so perfectly aligns with my own somewhat whimsical, naive writing style as a teenager. the book grows out of the protagonist's series of notebooks that she uses as her own journal, growing up in the 1930s. imagine the Anne of Green Gables books told in the first person and you'll have a good sense of the book. 5/5. “When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”     2) The Hunchback of Notre Dame , by Victor Hugo. i picked this up to read prior to our trip to Paris over Valentine's Day weekend, hoping that Hugo'

the day after i unsuccessfully tried to show her the man in the moon: "hey, you know what you can see if you look at the moon? a crawling crocodile!" out of the blue one day, putting her hands on my cheeks and looking straight into my eyes: "Mama, when are you going to be a saint?" (out of the mouths of babes!!) pointing at a crow: "Mommy, it's a condor!" (still have no idea where she learned about condors!) after crying: "Mama, can you get the wetmess out of my eyes?" (she still flips her 'm's and 'n's and i just love it.) we talk a lot about body parts and functions, so Cecilia knows that some of the water she drinks eventually gets turned into pee and is stored in her bladder until she needs to go to the bathroom. the other day, completely out of the blue while playing with her toys, she said: "Mommy! when i drink milk , does that turn into pee in my bladder too?" #proudestmommoment

one of the best parts of living in a foreign country is embracing their cultural traditions. of course, this means temporarily letting go of some of our own familiar customs, like neighborhood trick-or-treating on Halloween. here in Rome, the kids may dress up on Halloween itself and do a trick-or-treat activity at school, but there's nowhere near the excitement and community participation that there is in the US, and certainly no All Saint's Day parties for the girls to attend. this has been a major disappointment for them since we moved here, but this year, the Carnevale festivities more than made up for it! Carnevale in Rome is not as elaborate as it is in Venice or Brazil; it's mostly focused on the kids, who are seen walking about the city in costume for weeks in January and February. Cecilia's preschool class had a special Carnevale party the week before Martedi Grasso (Fat Tuesday), when they all dressed up and then walked down to the local park to play and thr