Max goes to School!!! Today was Max's second day at his Asilo (Italian Pre-School) and he did not even cry when I left him;-) Yea! The Italian pre-school system has a long settling in process where the parent waits at the school to make sure their child is doing OK. So this was day #2 of me sitting in the hallway while Max spends a longer time each day in class. Today he stayed for 1.5 hours tomorrow he stays for 2 and on Thursday if everything is going well he gets to stay for lunch.

These are the stairs that lead up to his class which is called Picolissimi. Here he is asking me, "Mom what do those numbers say?" He really likes this tree mural that leads up to his class;-)

I know, I know how many cute smiley pictures is Colleen going to put on the blog...really! I just can't get enough of how cute she is, lucky for me I get to spend a lot of time with her.

Today we went swimming at a public pool in a town called Creazzo. In Italy it is required that you wear a swim cap in the pool...So far nobody has been able to give me a very good answer why this is. I have heard that it is so that they don't have to clean the filters very often, but it seems like there must be more to it than that. Although you can't actually tell it from this photo, Max LOVED his swim cap. Who would have guessed? He did not even want to take it off when we put his regular clothes back on him and left the pool. I only got it off his head because he feel asleep in the car on the way home so I took it off him before I put him in his crib for a nap. He may wake up looking for it because that is how Max is.

Last week we went to the Gardaland Aquarium, near lake Garda. We meaning Max, Ms Fede (our fabulous part-time nanny) Chiara and I. They had some great exhibitions that you can climb inside and look at the fish from the middle of the tank, that is what Max and Ms Fede are doing here.

Chiara being the fantastic baby that she is slept the whole time in the Baby Bjorn while we enjoyed the sea life. Here Max and Fede (short for Federica) check out the jellyfish.

I love this look on her face, total amazement, even though she has seen this mobile just about everyday since she was born. I wish I could see things through her eyes for just a brief moment.

Because we live in Italy Max and I eat gelato a couple times a week. I just recently convinced him to start ordering a cup instead of a cone because his cones were always dripping in the heat because he did not eat them fast enough and would get really messy.

Joke's on me! I guess it is pretty futile trying to keep a 2 year old from getting his gelato all over himself, because he orders cioccolato every time most of his shirts now have chocolate stains on them;-)