Like the years before (2005, 2006 and the oops of 2007), the fall season means the kids at Julius’ school learn the art of making wine by picking grapes and stomping them with their feet.
And some weeks later the outcome is celebrated and it was quite some fun again. There were no performances by the kids, so Julius did not have his usual performance anxiety .. instead he played around, watched some middle age guy performing with puppets made from every day items (early lessons in recycling!) and I practiced my bad Italian on his teachers (he is an overall ok kid, who gets easily distracted and does not listen too well, sigh, as if I don’t notice that at home .. )
I exchanged emails with Ogarit’s mother (Ogarit being one of Julius closest friends) and we are planing to get together some weekends and have the kids play even some more.
The girl he is on the swing with is Gaia (we were at one of her birthday parties and her mom speaks English pretty well) … she has been in the same class with Julius since I can remember.
Ritsu is on a business trip so I sway from the weekly edition format (with which I am still toying with anyways) to keep la mama informed with fresh Julius pics.
It is getting cold here and I see that the kiddo has grown out of quite some of his winter clothing by now.
First item on our to-do-list this weekend was to check out the Castello della Manta which is truly beautiful. while we did not have to admission fee (because it was European Heritage Day) for the first time ever I paid 3€ to be allowed to take pictures! (Robbery) .. ok .. the place is very beautiful and the frescos are great (especially the ‘Fountain of Youth‘, which, frankly, to me looks more like an orgy)… but since I could not use flash, most of the pics are a bit blurry …
At times Julius would not behave or he got too loud … so we told him about the ghosts that live in the castle and how they go after noisy boys! That worked all weekend.
For Ritsu’s birthday weekend we went to a very nice hotel in the Langhe region (middle of nowhere) and thanks to heavy traffic we arrived just around 8 PM. The hotel people were nice enough to make a dinner reservation for us at a fancy new restaurant (and called ahead that we are late).
The restaurant is situated in this abbey and we were first a bit startled that the set menu did not mention any price. The place seems to be very popular, it was packed … and the food was just lovely. First we got a trio of appetizer bits, then sliced roast beef with pesto and then a mini tarte with glazed onions .. and that was only the appetizer fun …
Then they served the ‘primi’ which tonight were 2 pasta and 2 risotto dishes … I especially liked that pink looking red-beet based risotto. And for ‘secondi’ they had either pork in a mustard sauce or beef cooked in red wine.
We enjoyed the food and the service a lot, Julius ate mainly his pasta and tried a bit of everything else later. When he got bored he just took his pens and started drawing .. on the floor. And a bit later he discovered Stella, a very cute girl his age, at times he would even rather be at her family’s table than ours.
With a bottle of wine the total damage was around 80€, a very nice surprise. I can very much imagine going back there.
Today is Ritsu’s birthday and J and I woke her up by singing Happy Birthday in English and Italian (well, J was not that much of a singer this morning … maybe later today)
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He has beeb anticipating mama’s birthday ever since I had shown him on the calendar before and he kept drawing birthday cakes and ‘presents’ (boxes with ribbon around it). |
Tonight we are leaving for a weekend in the country and we have reservations at a (hopefully) very nice restaurant for birthday dinner. I will write about all that Monday when we are back.
So, what went on this last week:
While mama was still working in Geneva, Julius and I kept busy with things like making pizza:
Of course he had lots of fun making the dough, grating the cheese and smearing tomatoes all over the place.
In other news: Julius was a bit sick .. it started early Friday morning around 4:30 AM when he suddenly coughed so much that he needed to throw up … like a trooper he made it all the way to the bathroom before any accidents could happen. He repeated this one more time 30 minutes later, but than he was seemingly ok.
We wondered if he was ok for school, especially since on that day they had a school outing to go visit some farm in the mountains (organic lunch and pony ride included) and around breakfast he ate normally and looked as if nothing had happened. So we let him go.
When he returned he looked peachy, but was dressed in his exchange clothes, which means that he might have puked again … and then Saturday morning he had diarrhea. Our initial plan to go to the beach was cancelled by bad weather anyways, but now we also scratched our hiking plans, since Julius had to go every 20 minutes (lots of times just false alarm)
But still, he did not look sick! And no accidents happened … and by Sunday morning everything was back to normal .. so, our best guess is that he indeed had caught some bug, but his system successfully eradicated it in fairly short time.
So on Sunday we were able to do some hiking, for which we returned to the Sacra di San Michelle, where we had been a bit over a year ago. And yes, of course some geocaching was involved. We also returned to the nice restaurant we had been to last time and again we had very nice, homey and fairly cheap food. (Especially after Ritsu was still traumatized by restaurant pricing in Geneva)
This time around Ritsu had veal roast with porcini mushrooms (which are in season now), Julius had some very yummy pasta (with grated cheese, which later he finished by the spoonful) and I went for this tasty looking cheese platter. I also found out this time that the restaurant has a name: “Le Due Valli” (Not that google would know anything more about this place but the address).
And the weekly update would be incomplete without some of Julius’ current drawings (still his #1 activity these days)
In this edition:
(More cheesy details and photos here)
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I had mapped out those four caches to be done on our way TO Geneva (and then maybe map out some more for the way back), but it was raining cats and dogs so we shifted them all to Sunday, found one together in Geneva and then Julius and me did 3 more on the road back to Turin.
There are many more and some lure with spectacular hikes.
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His love for drawing is going strong but he also now shows first signs of writing … he had been fascinated with having his own name written on his pictures for a while now, but recently he starts to emulate and I wonder if they have started in school to write simple things … He is fairly good at writing ‘PAPA’ and his ‘Julius’ has a recognizable J, L, U and I … while order and direction might be mingled up …
But I think at age 4 there should be no pressure, so I just let him have fun with it and compliment him on his achievements.
(Not the best examples of his skills so far, there are better ones, but he quickly turns those into bigger artworks before I get to take pictures)
I had stopped doing those a while ago since it had made Julius think that food is something to play with … but after this weekend of cheese and carbs I just needed some extra incentive to get veggies into his system … and to my surprise, he ate the (raw) carrot mouth and zucchini nose first … then worked around the tuna eyes … then finished the hair … only left some fish … good job!
Just a quick hello from our rainy weekend trip to Geneva.
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We had a really fun week:
(Wanna know the recipe? Click here!)
Since we got back from vacation, Julius is totally crazy about drawing … if left with a stack of paper, he goes through 20 sheets in 10 minutes … so now I am trying to teach him the value of paper and while his artwork is very much appreciated, he needs to get an idea about just how much paper he uses.
He used to come home from school and demand TV … these days it is ‘I want to draw’ ….
Please let me know if you like this new format, or if you find yourself too lazy to click on links and prefer an all-in-one post.
Now, this is a pretty cool concept .. a bit like the eBay of knowledge … let’s see how that goes …
My listing is here.
Same goes for this blog ….
| At least the daily updating. |
For 4 years now we have chronicled Julius’ life with pictures, videos and stories pretty much every single day … sometimes even twice a day. For several reasons I think the time has come to cease the daily updating … and change to a weekly blog post.
And I want to know from you readers which day you would prefer for this weekly bulletin. Some may check blogs on weekends, other might do so first thing monday morning when they get to the office. Please let me know.
The reasons for change are many, here a list of some, in no specific order.
- At age four, Julius has definitely left the cute and cuddly baby years behind, and he is not changing that rapidly anymore. Also, he has become very camera aware and on multiple occasions he has let me know that he does NOT want to be photographed.
- I have the feeling that the initial enthusiasm of the readership has cooled down a bit, which is understandable … for one, Fiji was a more exciting location to read (and to write) about, and as stated above, the baby years, there was just more going on.
I still get the same number of hits on this blog(stats of the last 20 months), but 90% are from some google image search, and 9% are still in search for the elusive “Fijian Porn” … but very clearly the commenting has receded in the last two years. And I understand … just how many times do I expect you guys to write ‘oh, cute picture’ 
- There is just not that much going on! We have a good weekly routine, we don’t need weekly pictures of Julius eating meatballs, and the ‘good night little man’ excuse of a photo was cute while it lasted. But of course I will post outside of the weekly schedule when there is something special to report, or an extra good picture which cannot wait until the once-a-week update or when we are traveling … which reminds me .. I WILL keep working on all the stuff from our last summer trip, so expect (sometime around december I guess) a summary post with links to all summer 08 posts.
And just as a very early warning, I am playing with ideas what to do with the blog in the years to come, one thought being that when Julius turns 6 I might password protect it, so only close friends, family and long time readers can access it.
Lurkers .. now is a good time to de-lurk!
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