Hello from jetlag ... er, Italy

Yeah. I know, it happens every time. Jetlag. I HATE it. It's 3:30 in the morning here. We have a baby sleeping in our room. We started with Turtle, but we woke him up every time we moved, so now we are sleeping with Tadpole, who unfortunately wakes ME up because she's such a fussy sleeper. And once I am awake in the middle of the night in a time zone 9 hours off, well, good luck getting back to sleep!

The trip here went pretty well, in my opinion. Not quite as good as I had hoped, but much better than the worst I was expecting. Apparently after a month of cold rainy weather, we brought the warm weather with us, as we've had two beautiful days of sunshine and warmth.

The first day here, I went crazy eating delicious food and gelato and wine, and I paid with some terrible stomach-aches, and now I am taking it easy. I've been working on getting the kids back on some sort of routine, but it's been a bit tough with the jetlag. Little kids here stay up much later than I am used to in the US, so the usual routine we had at home will probably not work here. I'm still trying to figure out how we're going to handle it.

Our evenings after dinner are spent at a cool little open-air cafe/bar that is built in the original entrance of the 19th century stone fort that surrounds the (much older) town. The cafe has a jukebox, a big dance area, tables and chairs, ice cream of all sorts, food, drinks, and nice porch-swing-type seating here and there. I'll try to take a picture and post it. The kids of the town spend the evenings playing songs on the jukebox and running around or dancing. Tadpole and Turtle are having a great time chasing the other kids and hanging out with my husband's extensive family, and it's a nice break for us to have lots of free entertainment for the kids.

I'm surrounded by lots of people in really great shape (and a few who aren't) as well as plenty of exercise opportunities and lots of babysitters, so I'm hoping to really get some hiking, biking, and running in my schedule for the next month. Today, my husband's aunt dropped off her 9-year-old daughter with me and my husband's cousin and the kids so she could go on a 2-hour run. How awesome to be surrounded by family and able to do something like that spontaneously! Tonight after Tadpole fell asleep on my shoulder at the cafe, we brought the kids home, put them to bed, and asked my MIL to stay with them while we walked the two minutes back to have another drink before going to bed. The kids are spending so much time with grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and even more extended family, it's a beautiful thing.

Plus I'm really hoping that being immersed in Italian at this point in their lives will help offset the fact that I am an English-speaking stay-at-home-mom in an English-speaking country. I don't know a lot about raising bilingual children, and while it helps that I am almost fluent, I still don't speak to them regularly in Italian in the US, and they don't see their father that many hours per day, plus we speak to each other in English. I think we'll have to change a few things in the future (Italian should probably be our family language rather than English).

Anyway, a lot to think about and a lot to write about, and hopefully I'll start taking some pictures and posting them, as it is a really beautiful green summer here. Cheers!