Trick or Treat!

Claire had a very fun and very busy Halloween week. It started with an extra special Kindermusik class on Thursday where the kids got to wear their costumes. Claire and her friends, Sadie and Elizabeth had a lot of fun in the class with their costumes on. Claire was very good at identifying Elizabeth and Sadie as a duck and a bee. She would frequently point at them and say duck or bee.

On Friday we went to Carney Park for their big Halloween party. We met up with Sadie and her family and the girls had a good time riding the Halloween train around the golf course and they had their first taste of trick-or-treating. The best part of the evening was certainly when the parents were hanging out eating dinner and the Sadie and Claire spent ages taking candy out of each others' trick-or-treat buckets and putting it back in. They had a fantastic time re-arranging the candy and taking it and giving it to one another. I think in the end, Sadie ended up with more candy, but Claire held her own.



Saturday was a very busy day. In the morning we went to see Elizabeth and for a fantastic brunch with her family and Sadie's family. They live closer to downtown Naples and they have a fantastic view. The girls had fun playing, as usual.


Saturday evening we went to the support site to have dinner at a friends' house and then we went trick-or-treating. Claire had a great time walking around, holding her daddy's hand and her pumpkin bucket. I'm not sure she really "got" what was going on, but she loved seeing all of the kids in their costumes and running around after them.


She especially fell in love with a little boy dressed as Elmo and as he walked away, she promptly followed after him. I'm sure she would have happily joined that family if I hadn't run after her.


Now, she is peacefully sleeping after a long couple of days and I am doing what I'm sure every parent does on Halloween night after their kids have gone to bed.... eat their candy!

Little Walks in the Parco

In the evenings, Claire loves to go on little walks around our 10-house parco (gated community).


She likes to stop and check out the leaves and flowers along the way and stick her feet and fingers in the puddles.

Mostly, she loves to visit Ginger, the very old dog who lives at the end of the row of houses. Sadly, Ginger was not at the gate today, but normally she sits very calmly on the other side of this gate as Claire pets her and pokes her.

Pumpkin Carving

In honor of Claire's interest in cats, this year we chose to carve the profile of a cat and a crescent moon into the pumpkin (it's obvious, right... right?).


She was somewhat interested in the initial opening of the top of the pumpkin, but sadly, she quickly lost interest. We were hoping she'd dig into the seeds and insides with both hands and make a big mess, but sadly, that did not happen.


I was able to get her to pose with the pumpkin a little bit on the front porch, however.

Sunny Days

Last week we were lucky enough to get tickets to a live Sesame Street performance on the base. This is a great traveling show that spends much of the year traveling around to different bases and performing for the kids and families there. The show was about thirty minutes long, which was a perfect length for Claire, and the singing and dancing was great.


Leading up to the show, I think I was more excited about it than Claire was. We had never taken her to a live performance and I thought it would either be a huge hit and she'd love it, or she would be freaked out and I'd have to remove a screaming baby from the show and try not to disturb anyone else.

She wasn't too familiar with Sesame Street before a few weeks ago, but leading up to the show, I showed her some episodes and DVDs of Sesame Street. She has quickly learned to recognize Elmo, whom she calls, "EL!"

The night of the show was great. We met up with Sadie, Elizabeth and their parents (poor Andy was in Germany on business, so he had to miss it). We all sat together and the girls were mesmerized by their light up Elmo spinny toys until the show began.


When the characters came out, singing and dancing, all three girls immediately loved the show. They were each so focused on the characters and so excited by the singing and dancing.

Claire absolutely loved it. She was smiling and dancing the whole time. She clearly, thoroughly enjoyed the show, which made me very happy. I am really looking forward to taking her to more things like this in the future!
This is a video of Claire watching Sesame Street. It's not the best quality and there is no audio, but it's a good snippet of how much Claire enjoyed the show.

Claire's Little Friends

It's taken us some time, but we have a great daily routine set up, which Claire seems to love and gets mommy some exercise. When we moved here I was really lucky to meet two other moms on the playground with daughters near Claire's age. For the last couple of months, we've been meeting nearly every morning to jog, walk or go to an exercise class. The girls stay in the strollers, entertained with their toys and snacks. After the moms have exercised, we go to the park.


We had a tough time getting the girls all together in one shot... Sadie and Elizabeth seemed to be having a better time at the park than Claire was that day. They had a great time running around. She mostly wanted to stand by mommy.



Sadie, Elizabeth and Claire have a great time playing together and they have become more and more interactive with one another. And of course, I really enjoy the time hanging out and talking with the other moms, who are quickly becoming two of my good friends here.


Elizabeth and Sadie climbing the stairs while Claire looks on. Sadie has some of the best expressions!


After the park, Claire and I will sometimes run a couple of errands, then head home for lunch and her nap time.

The Garden

Our house in Pozzouli has great outdoor space, which is certainly one of the main reasons we chose this house. We have a lovely front yard with various trees and bushes, including something that looks like a Christmas tree and also a palm tree... just one of Italy's many contradictions.


Our backyard is even better. We have about a dozen fruit trees, two lemon and the others are orange trees. Some don't seem to be doing so well right now, but we sure are looking forward to some tasty fruit.


Claire loves being outside both in the front yard and the back. I usually just let her roam free in the backyard because it is fully enclosed with no gate to the outside. She even has a little baby slide (thank you Solley's) which she loves!

A future computer nerd.

Claire has really started to become interested in the computer.... hmmm... perhaps she sees mommy and daddy spending time looking at this funny little box and wants to join in. She really likes looking at pictures, especially ones of animals and she loves webchat, so if anyone wants to set up a webchat date, let me know!

A Sunny Sunday in Pozzouli

Near our house in Pozzouli (I can jog there when I am ambitious), is a lovely boardwalk/waterfront area. It's been newly re-done and tiled and has a number of (not too trashed) playgrounds, which is rare around here.


The views of course, are magnificent. Claire and I decided to take a little walk down there last Sunday because the weather was so beautiful. I'm so glad we're getting some relief from the heat... but it is certainly not cool yet...


Claire also had fun when she discovered some puddles there that mommy let her splash in. So fun!

Back from sunny England!

Claire and I got back from England on Wednesday (and Andy hopped on a plane to NYC for a friend's wedding) after spending a week in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds with our dear friends Katy and Jimbob. We got to help celebrate Jimbob's 30th birthday at a fantastic (and huge) surprise birthday party that Katy organized.

We spent the rest of the week, hanging out, seeing the sights, and of course, enjoying some fine English beer and food (well some of the food was horrific).

In addition to spending time in Cheltenham, strolling on the High Street, we went to the seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare where most Brits complain that you can never see the sea because the beach and mud flats are very shallow, and most of the time the water is really far out. I guess we must have brought some of our American (or now Italian) luck with us because we had a very high tide and we saw the sea just fine! Sadly, because it's not quite beach season any more, there were no donkeys on the beach for Claire to ride on and the cute little train only did a small trip along the shore. But, we did get to see the small aquarium and we probably ate at the most disgusting restaurant in all of England, so by default, perhaps the whole world. It was so gross, I don't even want to talk about it.... just think, mystery meat.


We also visited Burton on the Water, a town near Cheltenham that we loved visiting when we lived there.


At Burton we went to a bird sanctuary and saw all kinds of birds, including really cool penguins, some lovely owls, and probably the scariest black devil bird I'd ever seen. The black birds had these crazy bills, and the male had a very long pointy one which had obviously been injured, so it was repaired with a metal, yes, I said METAL prosthetic beak complete with rivets down the side of it. Scary. I'm just glad Claire was too interested in walking around in the grass to really look at the birds.


Our other major tourist sight was Burford Animal Park which is a small zoo. We had a great time showing Claire all of the animals and riding the little train.


So, perhaps you've caught onto one of the (unplanned) themes of this trip... ANIMALS! We didn't really intend to go to so many animal places, but Claire is really in the stage where she is starting to recognize, imitate, and take interest in animals. In fact, because of these animals, and the constant reinforcement by Katy, Jimbob, Andy and me, her vocabulary nearly tripled during the trip! Well, I guess that is if you count making animal noises and imitating animals as "words", but she is showing clear understanding and even retention of the words. For a girl that was a slowish talker, her language has really started to explode!


It was a great trip. We had such a wonderful time visiting with our friends and Claire really took to them too. It was so exciting to share how much she learned during the trip with Katy and Jimbob and to show them what an interesting toddler she is turning into!

Katy sure seemed to have fun spoiling her!