#67: Post-Christmas Demons
Buon Natale!
I hope you had a lovely Christmas Day, and that you stayed cool out of the heat.
We are still adjusting to the concept of cold Christmases, but I have to say it is quite nice. A roast lunch is even more enjoyable when you aren't sweating as you eat it, although I miss the mountains of cold seafood and salads.
If a salad has more than two ingredients, or is dressed with anything other than oil and vinegar, it is viewed as a crime in Italy. However I must admit I do occasionally crave a good crunchy noodle salad, or anything by Ottolenghi.
Our month of grandparents came to a close on Santo Stefano (Boxing Day), with the departure of Flav and James.
We were very sad to see them go, and hope they will be back soon.
As is often the case, now that we've found ourselves with a moment of quiet after a busy period, we've promptly all fallen ill.
Poor Leo kicked off proceedings, with complete lethargy and 40 degree temperatures. And inevitably, like human dominoes, we tumbled one by one into the germs. Raffy held out the longest, but even she has joined the sick club today.
The end result being that the four of us have not seen another soul for three days and counting. We've quarantined ourselves into the apartment, and are working our way through Pixar's back catalogue. Toy Story seems to be the crowd favourite.
Every now and then one of us will have to venture out into the outside world, for essential supplies like milk, bread and gelato. We feel like gremlins, dressed in the biggest coats we can find, dazzled by sunlight, and eager to return home to our cave as soon as possible.
David joked this morning that we were on the way to needing to hire an exorcist to remove the demons from our house. Or at the very least, some kind of biohazard treatment company.
In any case, I very much hope that we're coming through it all now. It hasn't been much fun!
And just to tease us, the weather outside our windows has been perfect. Nothing but clear days and the bluest skies you've ever seen. Of course...
The other major downside of being sick and not leaving the house, is that I don't really have any new Italian life anecdotes. This is probably the first time I have sat down to write this letter and realised I can't recall any amusing or insane interactions from the previous week. I'm sorry to have failed you in this way!
All I have is the increasing trend towards Italian in our own home. Raffaella (which she now refers to as her Italian name) regularly speaks to herself and us in Italian, which is great for me. Keeps me practising while I'm not regularly attending classes. She has a very good handle on keeping the languages separate, and it is exceedingly rare that she will ever combine them together. It's only really if she doesn't know a word in either language, but even then she will stop and query it, rather than just replace one with the other.
Leo, on the other hand, is a very cute mish mash of the two. With us he speaks predominantly English, but some phrases are only Italian.
A few of my favourites are:
E poi... And then... Which he usually uses when he's getting dressed, or doing something else with multiple steps. For example, "e poiiii.... socks on! E poiii... pants on!"
Eccolo! Here it is / here he is! Often used when playing hide and seek.
He will only ever call a dog a "cane".
Mettere a posto, which means tidying up. This is usually said when he's putting all of his toy cars back in the back of the dump truck that he likes to store them in.
I know I should probably be (gently) encouraging him to speak English at home, but honestly it makes me so happy to hear Italian from both of them that I can't help but play along.
Lots of love and hugs,
Kate
