First Birthday

Well, Valentina is one year old. Unbelievable. What is EVEN MORE unbelievable is that she is STILL not eating solid food or drinking anything, including breastmilk, from a bottle. Or sippy cup. Or plastic cup. We heard from the lady at our bank that her daughter didn't eat any solid foods until 18 months. Ouch.

She is fairly on schedule with everything else though. Lots of words, including "ciao, ciao" and "gak". She says that a lot. We thought it meant "duck" or "quack" but now we think it either means "grandma" or "kijk" (which is "look" in Dutch).

Although that is sort of a joke because Davide speaks Italian to her, not Dutch.

Definitely a lot of fast crawling and wants to stand up holding onto the furniture ALL the time.

We are loving life in Merano: beautiful mountains, great weather, completely pedestrian town, about a two minute walk to Nonna and Nonno's house, marvelous Terme baths.

What more can you ask for? Come visit!!!

Crash

What a day...!

I'll come back on this one soon.......

We're moving to Merano

On Mai 1st we'll be moving to Merano (South Tirol) in the north of Italy on the border with Austria. On the photo above you see the building we rented. The upper floor on the corner with terrace overlooks the cathedral square and the old medieval shopping street.
It's quiet and pedestrian, across the street of my parents's house, facing the cathedral and overlooking the mountains. it's really gorgeous.

We couldn't stand Firenze anymore with Valentina. It is loud, dirty, there are no green parks or nice walks to do with her. Of course it's a beautiful historical city with beautiful monuments, markets, wine and food.

Merano and South Tirol has too beautiful monuments mainly in the form of castles, beautiful wines and pretty good food too. Maybe the atmosphere and the culture is not so italian but Verona is just over an hour drive. Venice and Milano just over two and a half hours drive.

That's to start with the news. More soon...