Christmas is coming! As tradition here in Italy, today is the day to set up Christmas trees and decollations at home. Officially, it's a Christian holiday (Immaculate Conception, which I was not familiar with until a few years ago) and schools are off. From the morning my son helped me decollating our tree near the fireplace.
Then my husband who came home for lunch was shocked to see the tree was almost done. I did not know that it was also their tradition to do it altogether in the family. I told him not to worry as we still had not finished with the lights. So, in the end we inaugurated our Christmas season at home together.
Anyway, time flied since my last article. How have you been? For us, it has been an eventful latter half of the year. First of all, we left Bologna and moved into our new home in the historic city center of Ferrara. The building itself was first built in the late 15th Century and is designated as a monument! Due to that it took us a whole year to conclude all the unbelievably complicated bureaucracy.
If you could see how charming inside our new home in this ancient palazzo is, perhaps you could agree it was worthwhile waiting that long. Here I show you a corner of our beautiful living room furnished with arched windows and a fireplace. Behind the book I want to talk about today, can you see some dots on the plastered white wall? This is something you would only find inside Italian medieval monuments.
We painted each room with olive and purple wine. And they became the theme colours of our home. There are some downsides of living in such an old building, like getting dusty fragments of the dated exterior walls inside every time we open the windows, or cohabiting with strange insects, but so far we are satisfied with having such a particular home.
The surroundings are also fascinating, as our home is located in the UNESCO heritage site! Every corner of the neighbourhood is filled with medieval atmosphere, which is slightly different from that of Bologna. I would say the Ferrara old district is a bit more feminine.
Another big change in our family was that my son entered the kindergarten in September. My husband and I are so happy that he finally gets to play with many kids of his age every day, and he seems to enjoy it.
This change also brought me a lot more me-time during the weekdays, as he stays there until five o'clock. This usually is impossible in Japan unless I had a fulltime job, so I am grateful for how it works in Italy, well, at least in Ferrara.
As soon as he started his new social life in the kindergarten, his Italian got remarkably fluent. I was quite impressed when enough complex phrases like "Where is my red toy car auntie gave me?" came out of his mouth one day. He still cannot speak like this in Japanese.
Actually, I do feel a bit sad now that he almost always speaks Italian, even when I speak to him in Japanese. In addition, my husband occasionally pressures me to teach him more Japanese. But there is little I can do with the fact that he is growing up in the Italian society, with nobody but his mother speaks Japanese. I try not to stress out so much about it.
I believe as long as we keep him exposed to Japanese, it will one day help him understand it better and eventually speaks it more. And that is what I do, also with books. Now I intentionally read to him in Japanese, regardless of in what language the book is written. He got also interested in hiragana, the Japanese alphabets.
And last month, just around his third birthday, he started to follow the whole story in a book. That was the yellow book you see in the top photo. It's a Japanese edition of one of the American children's classics, Curious George series. From beginning to end, asking me to read it word for word. That was a big change. Maybe the time for ad-lib storytelling is over now.
In this book, a little monkey George goes to the cinema with his friend, the Man with the Yellow Hat, and as always, causes a trouble due to his curious nature, but in the end makes everyone got involved happy. The plot is simple and the volume is ideal for my son. He loves it so much that we have been reading it every night before bed for more than two weeks now.
Once we open the book we have to finish it, otherwise he would not go to sleep. One night I was falling asleep and he woke me up saying, "Come on Mamma! Read me more!"
Mimicking protagonists is what he always does while reading. In this book, he tries to make animal shapes with his little hands when George does so in silhouettes. He jumps and runs around on the bed when George runs up the staircase in the theatre. It's been repetition of same movements for each scene night after night, but I never get tired of it. Even when I would rather go to sleep, it's rewarding to see my cute curious little monkey.
I keep about a dozen of different children's books bedside so he can discover other stories. But in the end he always chooses George, his all-time favourite character. Now I am looking for another book of George for his Christmas gift.
I think this year my son got better the idea of what Christmas is about. Not much the religious part but the fun part. He often asks me, "when is Santa Clause coming?" as we walk down the streets filled with the winter holiday vibes. Coming home from kindergarten is more fun this month, as we get to see a variety of illuminated decollations unique to each block. The other day we witnessed the moment they were lit up. His eyes were gleaming.
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Bonus is that we also get to look down the classy lights of snowflakes while staying warm at home, thanks to our street being one of the last parts of the illuminated area.
As in many cities in Italy, a gigantic fir tree also appeared near the Christmas market in the Ferrara's main square. It took about ten days until they completed the setup. I have been witnessing the work since the first day when the tree was still being laid down. When I saw them putting ornaments last night, it still did not convince me if they would make it before today's celebration. But this slowness is no surprise to me. I'm in Italy.
So, I decided to make this post the last one. I cannot say if I will come back again with a new story, but I will not cancel this site. I am happy if someone will discover my archived articles and find them interesting or somehow useful in the future.
I am not completely going away, though. As a children's book lover, I want to continue to share many books I adore, in addition to the books I read with my son in the years to come. They will not appare here but on the Instagram page I launched for this blog. I intend to keep it more frequently posted. Hope to see you there!
Curious George Goes to a Movie (Japanese version)
Written and Illustrated by H. A. Rey and Margaret Rey
The original English title published in October 1998 by HMH Books