Roma

The Pantheon

Hmm. What were we thinking. Rome. Sounds fun. Sounds educational. With this trip we did manage to plan ahead enough to get better prices on airfare and more thoughtful accomodations. But truly up until the last minute we weren't sure if we were making a mistake trying to go. It was hard to know, even if we had to eat the airfare, and most of the room cost, would it be smarter just to stay home? Somehow math skills don't make it any easier to compute. And then we came across the website romebuddy.com (searching on Rome with kids, or something silly) and we knew we were in for a challenge. If we are at all satisfied with our time there, it's probably due to the reduction in expectations due to that site.

Now that we're back, today I would say it was worth it. Not having seen the bills. It will be interesting to see how the kids would answer now and a year from now.

Olivia wrote a couple of lines in the guestbook after I finished. There were about three lines of text, but the words on the page were not in the order she wrote them in. She said she liked the way people sounded when they spoke English, and she liked the way the buildings stood. (That's what she said, I had trouble finding it on the page. Turns out she did too.) She also liked the gelato.

Sophia has my enthusiasm for travel. She was on cloud nine pretty much every minute now that I think of it. She was hardly able to go to sleep the night before we left. She woke up at the crack of dawn every day, as usual. She spends much of her time these days either breaking out into song (rock or opera or Grease), and various styles of dance, or making up her own language, spoken or sign language. Just oozing with creative energy.


Miranda was clearly as shocked as we were by how difficult it was to communicate in Italian, not having studied it. It was particularly entertaining when we were at our hosts' house for dinner and their three year old daughter engaged my girls in conversation at normal pace. Apparently she is known for running her own preschool class. She seemed right at home with my three kids trying to understand what it was they were supposed to be doing for her. She had a few puzzles, and she kept picking up the pieces they would put down, and placing them somewhere else. Talking the whole time.


Alice (Al lee chay)

Her parents are clearly overwhelmed by her (we know something about that). They were amazed we had had three so close together. "I can't imagine it." They kept saying. Her mom put her high chair up to the head of the table. She said no, and marched around to the side. She about did a dance when she cleared her plate at the end of the meal, after failing with various negotiations. "Finiche!" I don't know how to spell it, that's how it sounded, and then ran to the kitchen to get little yogurt containers for all. And boy did she scold Bruce for interrupting when she was speaking to her father. Makes you wonder what it's like when there isn't company. Ah, toddlerhood. How soon we forget.

This week we clean house, start to pack, and prepare for our last visitors. I'll try to get some Italy pictures up over the next couple of days. Ciao for now.