Meet my friend Sophia!

My good friend Anya and her four-year-old daughter Sophia came all the way from Denmark to spend three wonderful days with us. Anya and I lived together in London about eight years ago, the year Rob was in the States, and a beautiful friendship developed between us. Thankfully, despite being far apart now, we have managed to stay in touch all these years. We have visited each other before but this visit was particularly special since we spent quality time together with our little girls. Emilia absolutely loved having them around and made friend with Sophia immediately. She likes having kids around who can play with her and give her all the attention she so desperately needs. On the other hand, it was great for me and Anya to be together and have a proper catch up. When the girls were in bed it was all about drinking tea, chatting, flipping through magazines and gossiping like the old days. I loved having them around. We need to plan a trip to Denmark soon! 

 

 

 

 

 

New Food, New Textures

It's no secret Emilia likes to eat. When the girl is hungry, she has got to eat straight away or you'll hear her! She has been like this since day one so I am quite prepared and always try to get organised on time but it can happen that food is not ready as soon as she would like, sometimes, and we all panic! 

Now that she is one I am more relaxed about introducing new food into her daily diet and have been experimenting with some interesting tastes and textures. I have found out that Emilia absolutely loves fruit (like her daddy), any kind but grapes in particular.

 

 

Another thing she will never say no to is bread, all shapes, all kinds. Recently I have also introduced cheesy crackers and she likes them too. When I give her bread I always try to put a couple of other things in her plate to encourage her to eat different things and have a varied meal, like ham, cheese and veggies. Ham and cheese are among her favourite things, as for the vegetables, well, that's a different story. 

 

 

 

She enjoys mashed vegetables but she is not too keen on chopped ones. I suppose the real reason behind it is that when I mash her vegetables I always add some olive oil, meat or fish, Parmesan and rice. That's yummy, right? On the other hand, chopped veggies with nothing else can be a bit dull, I suppose. Tonight, for example, I put three things in her plate: broccoli, cauliflowers and cheesy crackers. She went straight to the crackers and all the green bits (and some of the white ones too!) accidentally (!!) fell on the floor. 

 

 

A successful new entry this week has been apple cake. In an effort to introduce new food to Emilia, a couple of days ago I baked an apple cake; I also added some vanilla yogurt to make it softer. My little girl loved it so much that I have already baked the second one! Yay! 

 

 

Mummies out there, if you know any good and healthy recipe that your little lovely ones go crazy for, I am all ears! xx

Dariana's First Birthday Party

Earlier today Emilia and I went to a birthday party. Our local friend, Dariana, turned one and we were invited to a costume party. As I didn't have time to shop around to get something for Emilia, I looked into her wardrobe to see if I could fix something at the last minute and thankfully I found the lovely fairy wings that Matilde gave to Emilia for her first birthday party. Perfect! Originally I wanted to put on a dress, she has a lovely grey and pink dress that goes just wonderfully with the wings, however, it's rather chilly in London these days and it was raining when we were heading out, so I had to dress her with trousers and boots instead! 

On the other hand, the birthday girl was wearing a super cute Flamenco dress that her parents bought for her on a recent trip to Spain. How adorable is she? 

 

 

 

Like Emilia, Dariana is a bit of a mix too: her mum, Katrin, is Russian, while her daddy is from New Zealand. Katrin cooked all sorts of Russian nibbles, there was even caviar on the table! She is also a professional piano player and entertained us all with wonderful classical music and of course played the Happy Birthday song for her sweet little darling. 

At first it was just Emilia and Dariana but then another Russian friend, Sophia, joined to play together. It was a very cosy and sweet party and it's nice to see Emilia hanging out with little girls of her age. Our baby is growing up and has her own friends now!

 

Play dates are fun (and messy!)

We hosted a play date today and we had so much fun. My friends and former colleagues Zaneta and Arianna came to our flat with their little ones, all girls, around 11.00am and stayed until 3.00pm. We played and ate all together and we had a lot of fun. Needless to say, the flat was an absolute mess but that's part of the fun, isn't it? Emilia absolutely loved hanging out with Maya (three), Lucy (two), and four month old Kayla. I am fortunate to have good friends with little kids around! 

 

 

 

A personal library

I mentioned before Emilia's love for books. We have so many that we are slowly building a mini, personal library. Everywhere I go I look for interesting books to get for her, so she has the Barcelona ones, the books from Siena, and the Washington D.C. little book on top of the other hundreds books that were bought by us or friends and family.

Yesterday afternoon I realised how many we have already. We put a blanket on the floor in the living room and read each individual one. Emilia wasn't happy until every single book was out of the crate. We have enough material to write a PhD thesis! Will she follow mummy's path? Do we have a researcher in the making? :) 

 

 

 

 

 

Under the Tuscan Sun

So much is going on these days that blogging has become a bit of a challenge. However, I promised to give you pictures of Tuscany, so here is a little account of our four-day adventure under the Tuscan sun.

Tuscany is famous around the world for many things: agriturismi, olive oil, wine, vineyards, sunflowers, landscape, art, culture and we were happy to get lost in all these things during our short stay. As our base we chose Casa Fabbrini and we couldn't have made a better choice. There are loads of agritirusmi to choose from but Casa Fabbrini was everything we were looking for: relaxation, peace, elegance, good food, all in all a sort of second home, or the dream house. The casale is simply beautiful and I loved the way it had been restored and decorated. It's simple and elegant at the same time, and it has a very nice welcoming and homely feeling. The hosts, Paola and Giorgio, are two very sweet people who couldn't work harder to make all your wishes come true. Many props to them for turning an old casale into a magical modern place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Perhaps the best thing about Casa Fabbrini was the food. In Italy food is regarded as part of someone's culture, we say: "You are what you eat", and it is absolutely true. There is nothing better that gathering around a fireplace in winter or a big kitchen and cook all together. Sharing recipes is part of Italian people's daily life and we, Italians, certainly like to eat well. Casa Fabbrini didn't disappoint; everything we ate was superb and everything was home-cooked by the one and only Giorgio by using fresh vegetables picked up directly from the garden and other locally produced goodies. The kitchen itself was gorgeous, who wouldn't like to cook in there!? When we arrived two little American girls were getting their hands dirty making pasta. Oh, we will have to go back with Emilia one day, I am sure she will love it.

And every evening we had dinner all together, us, the hosts and all the other guests and chatted for hours like old friends. We met a lovely family from NYC, one from Mexico and a Brasilian-Italian mix.

 

 

 

 

Breakfast was haven. All sorts of home-made cakes and tarts welcomed us every morning. This made me realise that I don't bake enough! It's time to start baking on a regular basis again. I have to say, we very much felt like part of the "eat" part of the movie Eat-Pray-Love. It was wonderful.

And when we were not eating, we were drinking some good Tuscan wine. As we were very close to the Montalcino area, we couldn't skip a trip to a cantina storica to learn how the legendary Brunello di Montalcino is made. And of course, we enjoyed a proper tasting lesson. The cantina was beautiful and the wine even better! At the end of the tour we bought two bottles and then ventured back to our agriturismo passing by hundreds of sunflower fields. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And when we were not eating or drinking we immersed ourselves into the local art and culture. We opted for Siena rather than Florence on this occasion as neither of us had been there before. Siena is a very cute city full of art and architecture. The highlights were certainly the main square and the Duomo but in general we enjoyed wandering around the tiniest little street. It was magical. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also visited two smaller and equally beautiful towns, Montepulciano and San Casciano dei Bagni. 

 

 

 

So, if you haven't been to Tuscany yet, make sure to start planning your next holiday!