Archive | family

Suzie’s Farm and The Blog Is Back!

August 25, 2014 at 12:23 am

“Hi and howdy!” says Farmer Gil. “Welcome back to the blog!”

Well, more like… welcome back, blog, and thanks to any and all of you who are still reading!

I fully expected that after two weeks of living in San Diego, I’d be back to blogging now and then. I miss this space and sharing life with you all! But we’ve been slammed with some family sickness (broken collarbone for Gil, rash for Lena, fevers for both of them) and have had visitors since we arrived. I think we’re turning the corner into a more settled routine. At last!

To start us off, here are photos from this past Saturday when we visited a local farm. We haven’t been to any kind of organic, family-friendly farm event in years — or maybe ever? — but I know they are pretty common in the States. Anyway, pretty much everything surpassed our expectations.

Suzie’s Farm, you had me at your artfully-designed flyer.

Watermelon gherkins! (aka teeny tiny cucumbers)

Hottest, hotter, hot, sweet, sweeter, sweetest.

Choosing peppers for salsa and cucumbers for pickling.

I’ve always wanted to make my own pickles, but the art of fermentation totally intimidates me. After Saturday, though, I have my own jar of pickles fermenting in the cupboard. What’s next… kombucha? (Sort of kidding since I’ve never even tasted it. #welcometoamerica)

If you want to learn to pickle, Southern California’s farmers are about the chillest and coolest folks to teach you. “Girl, you’re doing great, just peel some garlic here and toss that in too….”

While I was chopping cucumbers, Elliott was roasting our peppers. After they had roasted, we combined them with tomatoes, cilantro, and onions in a Vitamix…

… and Lena and Elliott pedaled to power the blender to turn them into salsa! Totally cool. Also the salsa is amazing and we’ve basically inhaled it. Fire-roasted 100% organic pepper-and-tomato salsa? Get in my mouth.

We ordered lunch from this fantabulous food truck on the premises, but they told us our meal would take 20 minutes to prepare, so we wandered off around the farm to pick some herbs and flowers and meet some…

No caption required.

And then… our lunch! That’s eggplant tacos, sweet potato fries, and beet dip (so pink!). Also it was all Elliott ordered for our whole family (“Man, I thought there would be a lot more food”). We all kind of looked at each other hungrily when we were done.

We ended the day by filling our take-away box to the brim with tomatoes and peppers.

Be choosy, Gil.

The tomatoes or Gala apples? Love the variegation.

Silly smile from another little helper.

And finally home, where we put the kids down for naps and then I rapidly bagged herbs and refrigerated peppers and cucumbers. An amazing haul of organic produce for just $20!

It cheers my heart (and warms my blood….) to see this because just yesterday I almost teared up at the grocery store while shopping for fruit. I’m not a die-hard organic or farm-fresh person — I eat commercially-grown veggies and fruits without fuss, like most people — but when I saw a huge bin of apricots under the florescent grocery store lights, my heart sank.

“Apricots” in Sicily are golden balls of sweetness, warm from the sun in the back of the farmer’s truck, kissed rosy pink on one cheek, dripping with juice and bursting with flavor. Memories rushed back: simple chit-chat in Italian with farmers while buying kilo after kilo of apricots under the Sicilian sun. Lena and Gil eating apricots in the stroller as we walked home. Apricots on the counter, apricots with our dinner, apricots for every snack, apricots turned into jam.

These apricots in the grocery store yesterday, though, were out of season and a sickly green, over-sized, a poor imitation of the thing I’d come to love. I picked one up and felt it sadly; it was cold and hard.

So maybe we won’t buy fresh apricots from farmers’ trucks in California. We’ve said goodbye to many things. But this — this glorious summer afternoon, this cache of memories, this jar of to-be-pickles, this quart of fresh salsa, this box of herbs and peppers, this bouquet of glowing sunflowers…

… we’ve said hello to all of this. And it’s so good.

31 :: in family, San Diego

Unplugging and Restarting Your Parenting Overseas (or Right Where You Are!)

May 19, 2014 at 7:40 pm

When I told my dad we were moving to a foreign country, he said: “I think this is so good. You guys are young. You can go away and establish yourselves as a family, work out your priorities, without a lot of family nearby and outside influences. This is a great, great opportunity for you, and I am so happy for you.”

I’ve thought about that a thousand times since we moved to Sicily three years ago. My parents raised my siblings and me overseas, so he spoke from a depth of experience. He knew that anyone who lives overseas has a choice. You will be isolated, you will be lonely, you will be overwhelmed, you will be foreign.

But.

You can use the isolation for your benefit. You can take advantage of the distance from the influences that affect your peers. You can reevaluate your priorities, establish new habits, build a foundation for your family. You can train the crew of your little ship so that when the world’s fancies sway this way and that, you can still hold steady to your goals.

For us, Sicily was where our parenting started. Lena was just three months old when our plane landed in Italy. Also, I quit my job when we left the States, and I couldn’t immediately find work here. (You can read about that difficult transition here.)

After I accepted my new status as a full-time mom instead of a full-time nurse, I sat down and thought about the kind of mom I wanted to be, especially as a stay-at-home mom. This move gave us a chance to establish ourselves as parents and as a family and to decide what our priorities would be.

These were the priorities we have established here:

We want to read.

A lot. We love to read, thanks to parents who raised us on a steady diet of great literature. My husband and I read an average of 50 books a year on our own, and we read at least four books a day to each of our kids.

One trick to reading a lot is to surround yourself (and your kids) with good books. There are [piles of] books all over our home, and I recently calculated that we have about 100 board books and 150 picture books. Plenty to keep both the readers and the listeners interested in the stories!

(Note to moms trying to build their home libraries: try library book sales. I’ve filled boxes with children’s books at library sales in the States and then shipped them back to us overseas with the super-cheap, super-slow Media Mail option.)

We want to cook our own clean, healthy food.

We live in a small town in rural Sicily, and we have to drive at least 30 minutes to get good ethnic (ie. not Italian) food. We enjoy going out to a restaurant once a month or so – usually for incredible wood-fired pizza in our town – but it’s stressful with little kids. So… in Sicily, if we want to eat, we kind of have to cook.

And cook we do! Thanks to dearth of restaurants and a cornucopia of produce, I’ve finally gotten the crash course in basic home cooking that I so desperately needed… oh, when I went to college. I do our dry-goods shopping at the U.S. grocery store on base, and then we try to purchase most of the perishable items — fruits, vegetables, cheese, seafood — at the market or in town. Sicily makes this easy.

I’ve watched my friend Rachel beautifully transform the food culture in her home since moving here. Here’s what she said about living and cooking in Sicily:

“Not having the fast food option has helped me to learn to embrace cooking. I’ve always enjoyed it, but having such easy (and cheap) access to incredible fresh ingredients has motivated me to search out ways to cook them. On top of that, I’ve loved having my kids in the kitchen with me! … Mussels and artichokes are their favorites these days. (Isn’t that crazy?! We can’t believe it, either!) We love knowing that we’re laying a foundation of healthy eating for them!”

We don’t want TV to be a big deal in our home.

By that I mean that we want to spend more time doing other things, and we don’t want our kids sitting in front of screens. For now, our family does not own a TV. Our kids don’t expect movies or computer time; we just fill our days with other activities. We don’t think this is a permanent choice (both Elliott and I grew up with — and loved — family movie nights), but it’s right for us during this season.

I’d like to blog more about this soon, but in the meantime, Amanda wrote an amazing blog post about living without a TV during their three years in Japan. I highly recommend it!

We don’t want to spend a lot of time on our computers or phones in front of our kids.

I wrote more about my decisions to limit my iPhone usage here. (Elliott doesn’t own a smartphone right now, so it’s a lot easier for him!)

I loved my friend Sarah’s comment on that blog post because it shows how Sicily has helped her unplug and restart her parenting as well:

“Since moving to Sicily it has been very freeing to be in a different time zone where social media is not buzzing in the phone…. I have found that also I get frustrated with my kids if I’m distracted by my phone because they’re not allowing me to “focus.” I have noticed that and have now made a point to only check FB and email in the mornings, nap time, and the evenings…. It allows me to be a mother and wife who is present.”

Amen to that! I only wish it were more true of me.

We want to explore alternative employment.

I sell handmade crafts, do copy editing work for my dad’s organization, and blog… and earn a few dollars a month. ;) It’s ok; earning money is not my primary focus right now. I’m enjoying this chance to explore other fields besides nursing during these years so that I have a better idea of my skills and interests (and so I keep developing both of those!) whenever I re-enter the workforce.

Elliott has also enjoyed “building a platform” that might lead to another career down the road. He established a website and podcast while he was here called “The Uncommon Veterinarian.” He also is almost finished with his first novel, a monumental feat of dedication.

We want to stay connected to family back home.

We Skype with family on weekend afternoons, and my blog is a big way to stay connected to our family and invite them into our lives. We also love it when they visit us here!

We want to open our home to visitors.

We love having family and friends come to stay, and we’ve tried to make that a priority in our lives by always having an available guest room, a pretty open schedule, and a welcome invitation to anyone who would like to come.

This year we’ve had week-long visitors every month since October, and we try to open our home regularly for dinners, play dates, and game nights, too. It’s all a part of our life-goal of making room… hence the name of this blog!

We want to spend time outdoors.

That’s why we chose a house that had a whole green valley for a backyard. Except in the summertime, we take the kids on a hike about every week. Often Elliott will take the kids for a walk as soon as he gets home from work and while I’m cooking dinner. They meander down to the piazza and come back with fresh bread and wine to accompany our meal, or sometimes they walk farther to a farm near our house.

——–

For those of us in Sicily – or living anywhere overseas – this is a rare opportunity. Living overseas is an adventure, and there are definitely extra challenges with the distance from family and smaller community and resources. But don’t forget that the community is (usually) ready-made and eager to welcome you; resources are often plentiful and free; and you live in a beautiful-in-its-own-way, once-in-a-lifetime location.

Of course, unplugging and restarting your parenting — or your life! — is important to do wherever you are whenever you need to do it, whether you’re in Bahrain or Boston, Iceland or Indianapolis, Venezuela or Vancouver. Certainly there are more resources and more diversity when you’re in a major Western metropolis. I want our family’s priorities and goals to be something we constantly remember, re-evaluate, and re-prioritize no matter where we live.

Now it’s your turn! Before you had a family of your own, how did you picture your family? How did you envision yourselves spending weekends, evenings, and holidays? What did you think your priorities would be?

If you’re single, how did you picture yourself at this age? Are your priorities in the right place?

And now: what baby steps could you take to help yourself get there? Here are some suggestions (most of which I could really apply to my life!):

Waking up 15 minutes earlier to pack a healthy lunch for yourself, or to get a shower in before the kids are up. (I didn’t do that this morning and wish I had….)
Going home next weekend to spend time with your parents.
Finally making a budget and sticking to it.
Reading one book this month that you’ve always wanted to read. Maybe a short classic like My Antonia, or a beautiful memoir like The Dirty Life, or a great piece of new fiction like What Alice Forgot.
Making a meal plan this week (just four meals, and use the leftovers for other meals) and shopping for the ingredients.
Setting a goal of something to do with your kids today, like reading one book to each of them, or building a blanket fort instead of letting them watch TV, or making homemade play dough in fun colors.

OK, enough talking. What do you think of all this? How can you unplug and restart your parenting right where you are? You guys inspire me! I can’t wait to hear what you have to say!

25 :: in Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom Series, family, Italy, military life, motherhood, Sicily, thoughts

At last… Paris!

May 15, 2014 at 7:55 pm

It’s been a month now since we were in lovely Pah-ree, and I think that’s because every time I looked at the pictures I got so depressed. Paris was so much more beautiful in my memory! It was like a dream!

But in my mediocre photographs, it looked rather ordinary, and our children looked somewhat overwhelmed, and the parents and grandparents looked very grateful to be sitting down with whatever beverage was in front of them.

I suppose many things were true simultaneously: we were enthralled and we were exhausted, we were fascinated and we were fatigued, we were savoring and we were stressed. Such is traveling with little children. And traveling to a place like Paris — which is e-nor-mous — when you are trying to see as much as possible in four days, well… there’s sure to be a lot of bliss and a lot of blerg.

Anyway. I finally did edit the photos. I think these “few” — culled from hundreds — help it to look delightful again, and that’s how I’d like to remember it!

Our babies will fit in the overhead luggage!
Also, first glimpses of Paris near the apartment we were sharing with Elliott’s parents.

In the final 15 minutes of an exhausting day of travel from Sicily to Paris, Gil threw up on me in a taxi. We arrived at our apartment feeling like we’d traveled across the world instead of the continent. That night, Elliott and I left our sleeping children in his parents’ care and went on a walk through Paris at midnight. Oh, how we needed that walk. We saw Notre Dame (behind us in the b&w photo) and then wandered back along the Île Saint-Louis to Berthillon.

And then we ended up behind Natalie Portman to get our ice cream! Way to redeem yourself, Paris. Thank you.

Pont des Amoureux (Love Lock Bridge) by Notre Dame the next morning.

Grampa & Gil inside Notre Dame Cathedral.

At the Rodin Museum with his Marmee.

Picking out a treat at the museum’s pretty outdoor cafe.

We spent a whole day at Versailles, where we loved the grounds (pictured above and below) and spent hours walking, picnicking, and biking around them.

This bike ride around the gardens was one of the best things we did on the whole trip.

On the R, goofing off with Lena in the elevator inside the palace because someone “weally, weally need to use da baffroom.” Real life with kids, even at Versailles.

The Hall of Mirrors inside the palace. I have pointedly cut off the heads of the several hundred other tourists who were packed like sardines into the room with us.

The kids rode not one but two! carousels by the Eiffel Tower one afternoon. Lucky ducks.

Eiffel Tower by day and by night from Trocadero. So beautiful! Lena shrieked with glee when the sparkly lights came on around 9pm. As my mother-in-law said, we all felt the same way, but Lena was the one who expressed it. Magical!

We visited Notre Dame every day. Lovely lady.

We happened upon the Marche aux Fleurs unexpectedly and felt like we’d stepped into a painting. A perfumed, misty, sensational painting.

Lena amused herself in line outside Saint Chapelle.

Inside Saint Chapelle, more beautiful than I’d ever imagined.

On our last night in Paris, we met up with my California cousins in a park between our apartments. The adults picnicked with baguettes, meats, cheeses, and wine in the grass, and the kids ran in ever-widening circles away from us and around the gardens and play equipment. A perfect, child-centric end to our stay.

The park where we met up with my cousins. Let me just close by saying that I love almost everything about Paris, but the parks and playgrounds every few blocks stole the show. When the kids were cranky, when we all needed to rest our feet, when it was time to spread out a picnic and relax… well, there’s nothing like a Parisian park.

Right, Gil?

——–

Have you ever been to Paris? What were your favorite things about the city? Not just museums, but unforgettable moments or memories?

13 :: in family, Paris, travel

Our Beach Vacation in Sicily {San Vito Lo Capo}

April 28, 2014 at 3:08 pm

For two years now, everyone has been telling us that the beaches on the western coast of Sicily (three hours from us on the eastern coast) were beautiful, but WOW!!! We were dazzled by the grandeur, the colors (so many shades of blue!), and the landscape.

Added bonus? Elliott’s parents were with us for their annual spring visit!

Reunited! Lena was literally squealing with glee as she ran to hug them.

I think my mother-in-law and I made “Mom and Wife of the Year” status on the morning we baked cinnamon rolls. Note to self: make ’em often!

Early morning artwork with our breakfast.

Our beautiful-but-rustic apartment was a 15-minute drive from the stunning Zingaro Nature Reserve.

Pointing out fishing boats on our hike down to that perfect, perfect little beach.

Feeding Grampa some pebbles. By the way, I have learned to vote for pebble beaches over sandy beaches. Pebbles stay on the beach, but sand seems to follow us everywhere for days.

More early morning projects.

Grampa and his two baby birds.

Hiking to the beach on our second day in Zingaro.

She’s got the beach babe pose all figured out.

One night we drove into the town of San Vito Lo Capo for dinner and took a walk along the huge beach there. It was breezy, chilly, and totally empty, ie. the polar opposite of summer.

The day we left San Vito, we had a looooooong drive ahead of us and no real schedule, so we stopped a couple of times to picnic and explore. Perhaps we’ve finally figured out how to roadtrip with toddlers?!

Stretching our legs in the town of Castellammare, where I just learned many famous American Mafia leaders were born. Western Sicily has historically had a much stronger Mafia presence than our part of eastern Sicily. (No complaints here.)

About an hour later, we dropped off Grampa and Marmee at the Palermo airport and said, “See you in Paris!” Then we drove across Sicily, unpacked, packed again, and flew to France two days later. A whirlwind, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I can’t think of two more different cities than Paris and San Vito Lo Capo, though! Photos of Paris coming soon.

5 :: in beach, family, San Vito Lo Capo, Sicily, travel, visitors

Lena turns three!

April 9, 2014 at 4:06 pm

Well, never has a day been so anticipated in our house, I don’t think. Lena has been talking and singing and dreaming about this day for weeks and months. I was a little worried there might be a crash of disappointment when the actual day came and went, but thankfully (unlike Gil’s birthday) I don’t think there were any tears all day. Hooray for that!

Gil and Lena woke up at exactly the same time that morning, so Elliott grabbed Gil and we walked into Lena’s room together singing “Happy Birthday.” She was thrilled when she saw her presents and cards piled on our bookshelf in our room, and she chose “the big pink one” to open first. That one was from us, and I’d filled it with fresh craft supplies: a new notebook (since her old one went everywhere with us and is totally full of stickers and drawings), crayons, markers, stickers, and her first pair of scissors.

For breakfast, she requested oatmeal with “yots and yots of brown sugar” and fresh-squeezed blood orange juice.

Gil fell head over heels in love with books about two weeks ago, and now he’ll sit in his bed or the kitchen for 10 minutes at a time, studying each page and pointing out animals. I frequently discover him cleaning off the kids’ bookshelf, too, and then sitting down happily in the middle of a pile of board books.

After breakfast, we waved goodbye to Daddy like we do almost every morning…

… played on the living room rug for awhile…

… and then Lena ate her much anticipated birthday treat: a pink yogurt with M&Ms. She spotted it for the first time back in November at the grocery store, and I answered her request with the vague, “Maybe for your birthday.” I thought she’d forget, but of course she didn’t forget. For the past six months, she’s looked for it on every grocery trip and reminded me weekly, “That’s the yogurt I’m going to get for my birthday!”

I’m sure all the anticipation made it taste much better than it actually did.

She asked last week for a raspberry cake, so I went to great lengths to find a recipe and even tried [unsuccessfully] to track down fresh raspberries (which I’ve never seen for sale in Sicily). At some point during her birthday morning, Lena said, “Mama, next year I would like a strawberry cake.”

Now why couldn’t you have asked for that this year, baby girl, when we have strawberries coming out of our ears?!

Around 9:30 we put Gil down for a nap and opened another of her presents. This one was a beautiful balancing game from her grandparents. The goal is to put as many of the wooden pieces onto the pirate ship as you can before it tips over. We’ve really enjoyed it so far, and I think it will be a lot of fun as the kids grow up and have friends over, too. I recommend it!

We mixed up Lena’s raspberry cake while Gil slept, but it was super messy and I didn’t get any pics.

Gil is up (I don’t think he slept), and we opened this wonderful gift: a doctor kit. It was a huge hit with both the kids, and her poor doll has had surgery every day since last Thursday.

Now let’s just all take a moment and enjoy how cute this is:

Future Dr. Garber, following in his veterinarian father’s footsteps? I hope so!

After lunch, we took a walk to the playground in our town. Along the way we stopped at “Nonno’s store,” the little shop where we buy our wine, pasta, Nutella, and other sundry items. Nonno (“grandfather” in Italian) always gives Lena a piece of chocolate when she comes, and she usually shares it with Gil.

After deciding for about two months that he preferred to crawl, Gil decided that day to start walking on his own. His flailing arms made me laugh so hard as he toddled from place to place!

And picking his feet up so high! Lena, meanwhile, continues to be our little acrobat/monkey.

Back at home, the kids napped for a couple of hours while I baked Lena’s cake for that night and cupcakes for her party the next day. When she got up, she watched birthday videos from her family. They were a huge hit last year, too!

We mixed up frosting together, and both kids were thrilled to lick a beater.

As I was grabbing my camera, I asked Lena to help me spread the frosting on the cake. She obliged by slapping her hand into it and obediently spreading it around!

Despite that delicious mishap, the cake turned out fine. A hungry little boy followed me around as I attempted a photo shoot. My favorite part was that the pureed raspberries in the batter turned the cake a pretty pink color.

Elliott arrived home around then, and we ate dinner (stay-in-bed stew and biscuits) and then opened the final presents. There was much glee!

And then — at last — the cake!

The next day we had a small party at a playground in Maranai, the U.S. military housing compound where some of our friends live. Lena and Gil shared a swing, and Gil toddled everywhere with his arms in the air…

… and Lena’s friend Matthew gave her a bottle of bubbles, which were the best thing about the party!

Little Lena, your dancing, jumping, and singing are joys in our lives, and we love to bake, hike, build block towers, and read books with you. You are just beginning to sound out words in books, and you’ve started to tell long, imaginative stories that leave us laughing with amazement at your imagination. You are such a cheerful big sister to your adoring little brother, who is literally grumpy if you are not around to make his world spin.

You’re snuggling me now after you nap as I type this, and I love the weight of your body on my chest and the scent of your hair next to my face. You have been one of the greatest gifts of my life, and I love you more than you’ll ever know. Happy birthday, Lena!