We have not had a dinner photo for a while
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We are still digging through moving boxes and Julius has a lot of fun putting stuff from one place to the other, which can get very confusing … but this way he at least lets me do the dishes for like 8 minutes …
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that is like 19 F …
The weather was dry and cold and perfect for a shopping stroll … We realized once again how close we are to the center of Torino, but also found out that most of the shops along Via Po do not open before 3:30 PM on a Saturday. But anyways, we found great shoes for Ritsu and a fantastic snow suit for Julius.
At the end we decided to do McDs … first time for Ritsu in Italy. And I wanted to introduce her to the ‘massive’ Big Tasty burger I had discovered there recently … I will write about that burger more later, interesting material for comparison between the US and the EU version. But here in Europe it is about 50% bigger than the Big Mac (in weight) has close to 900 calories (Big Mac only has 470) and it actually has some char grilled flavor, which by now I believe is in the sauce.
The restaurant was incredibly packed and getting a seat finally was close to a heart attack causing nightmare. But finally we sat and shared that monster burger. Julius was not too impressed with the sandwich, he just had some milk before, but he liked some fries(*). But most of all he loved the box the burger came in.
(*)Before I am getting hate mail / comments about feeding fries to the little one: I compensated that by a nice big head of brocolli for dinner, which he liked way better anyway.
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Sorry, no pictures of that. But we went to see a nearby pediatrician in the afternoon to have his eyes checked out. The doctor lady confirmed that it is something going around right now and I just keep wondering how many of the kids in the doctor’s waiting area we might have infected. Well, keep that follow up business running.
Actually, Julius had a blast while waiting. 2 older girls were playing with him. One of them, age 8, got her basic English out to ask for his name and age and within minutes they had a tea party going on. Another boy (over 2 years, speaking French) was equally quick in making contact with J.
The doctor was very nice and her English was sufficient, but a great plus was that her receptionists English was even better.
So, now we have to torture Julius every few hours with eye drops, but hopefully by Tuesday I can send him back to school.
As you can see, his eyes are not even red, it is rather his eyelids which are puffed up a bit … and lots of white puss coming out … But it will get better soon
really hard to do dishes … more text and the usual picture later … when he is asleep 
No idea where he got the idea to mount his motor cycle THIS way. But his balance is fairly amazing and we got him down before he could hurt himself.
On a less funny note, when I picked him up from kindergarten today, his eyes looked kinda crusty and the teacher told me that he has apparently caught an eye infection (from on of the other kids) and we should keep him home until that is over (to minimize the spread)
So far he is peachy and acts as if nothing is bothering him. We are keeping a close eye (pun intended) on the situation.
Turkey day is not a holiday here, so to find the usual ingredients can be tricky. Turkey is all over the place, but I have not seen it offered by the bird, besides that would have been way too much for us. Also cranberries are not known in this part of the world. Though I remember having seen them many years ago back in germany in the freezer section.
So, I came up with the following recipe which turned out fairly nice and creates a bit of the holiday spirit.
Take some turkey filets and smear them with lingonberry jam (available at IKEA) and cover with a slice of cooked ham … this should cover the main holiday flavours. If you find a way to ad some cornbread or stuffing … let me know.
Then roll the thing tight … you will be surprised to see how much of the jam is trying to squeeze out … fight it, and secure it with toothpicks.
If you have the time, let it marinate a bit. But once you are too hungry and too curious, fry those little buggers. Be careful, the leaking jam creates a nice caramel crust which can get black quickly.
Enjoy your holiday weekend
This morning was a bit different. Julius started to kick me out of bed aroud 3:30 AM … once he got his bottle he had a hard time falling asleep again (so had I) and before 6 he started smacking books in my face, giving me a clear sign that the night was over.
Since we are still figuring out better commute solutions from our new place, Julius and I took an even earlier bus today. And he was quite ok with that (actually .. waking up at 6 AM .. and then having to wait until the 8:05 AM bus would make him very antsy … so we took the 7:20 AM bus) …
Funny thing was that he fell asleep on that bus ride, after I had huddled him up nice and cozy with his hood and his gloves .. and he kept sleeping when I delivered him to the kindergarten .. and there we just put him in a comfy corner .. and he kept sleeping …
Gobble Gobble.
Well, it is not a holiday here, but I am trying to get something using turkey together for dinner. Hope all you US side readers have a wondeful holiday weekend, may you pig out and take adventage of all those shopping specials on Friday
Just how much fun one can create using a big cardboard box, a knife and some tape … and tadaaaa: you have a house for the little tyke. And he loves it. Especially funny is when he pokes his nose through the window and says ‘hallo, hallo!’
On a side note: this morning when we walked out the door we were surprised by FRIGGIN SNOW !!! White stuff came straight for us and the further the bus traveled up the hill, the whiter it got. Not that it would stick (for now) but it was kinda fun. And very early this year.
It is getting darker and colder every morning. But Julius is usually more excited than it is visible on this picture about getting to kindergarten. It is probably the hat .. he hates waering things on his head but I have to force him now that it has gotten pretty cold. And it seems he is getting used to it.
But once we arrived at the kindergarten, his royal peachiness forgot all about the hat and instead said good morning to one of the resident dogs: ‘Boni’
This hat makes for a great comparison: check out how much bigger the hat looked on him last year.
Last night we were invited by Sarah and Jan. Their son Sebastian goes to the same school as Julius does and Sarah has given us many many rides up and down the hill. Although it was close to freezing outside, Jan and I did our manly jobs of burning meat on the outside BBQ and we all enjoyed a really great dinner. Being parents of fairly young (and loud) boys, we had no problems keeping our conversation level up, while ignoring the kids getting really loud or saving some food from being flung at the wall.
Julius and Sebastian are getting along very well, even though Sebastian is 2 years older. The 2 seemed to have a blast racing around the house. Or watch some kids TV (It looks like they are playing an early Nintendo version in this game, but they are not)
Yet another successful bus trip to IKEA and Julius scored this very cool blue glowing night light, which is all rubbery and soft and obviously fascinating to play with.
And the musical, baby distracting link of the day (thanks to Judy) is banana phone
Found this interesting article on the soon-to-be olympic city we happen to live in now over at MSNBC.com
| “Turin is one of the prettiest, liveliest, and most intriguing cities in Northern Italy. As the hometown of car manufacturer Fiat, however, Turin is often mislabeled an “Italian Detroit,” and neighboring Milan and Genoa get more press (and tourists). This is entirely unfair. I’d go so far as to call Turin the most genteel city in Italy; its gracious urban fabric is a mix of broad Parisian boulevards, leafy London-style residential squares, and elegant coffeehouses that rival those of Vienna. [...]“ |  Turin’s Mole Antonelliana on the back of the 2 eurocent coin |
The whole article is located here
Well, not really a uniform, but the kids are wearing this at Il Cucciolo and finally he got his and I just had to take some pics of that. I never had to wear any kind of school uniform, but Ritsu says that she had something very similar in kindergarten.
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For nearly a year now we used a clip-on high chair for Julius wherever we went (including food at home) (First tested 12/30/04 and fooling around in it 7/2/05)
Now that we are settling in and had found a local dealer for the fantastic Stokke Tripp Trapp chair (known in the US as KinderZeat) I went today to pick one up, gladly they come in a nice box that makes bus traveling a bit easier (compared to the bed I did last week) and assembly was pretty easy …
Then, when Julius came home and I tried it on him, he was very apprehensive … but later on, once he was hungry and there was food on the table, he was very very happy with it !!!
Since July 2004, Nedstats had been the main counter for this website. I have used them before on other website and it used to be a fantastic and free service. Then they were recently bought and renamed to webstats4U … and then I started getting emails from readers that they suddenly get pop up ads when they visit this blog.
I had played around with google adSense a bit, but never got it to work properly … so I deleted all that code immediately. But thanks to regular reader Tammy, who keeps running a report of pop ups, I was able to determine that it was the NedStat code that caused the trouble (here is a good recap on what it does)
So, after a few days of trying StatCounter I was ready to let go of Nedstats … thank NedStats for 38870 counted hits, with an all time high of 168 on 8/26/05
He is really enjoying his water play in our new place: Bath with Mama in the evening and shower with Papa in the morning.
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