Construction Sites and Hospital Visits

Gio is finishing up his third week of Italian preschool.  He continues to be happy there, and his teacher reports that he is interacting well with the other children.  "He speaks in Italian and a little bit of English.  He makes himself understood!" (translated by yours truly)  One of my favorite parts about picking him up each day (well, after the mad dash he makes to my arms screaming "Mama!!! You came back!!") is the report his teachers give me on what he ate at lunch.  Yes, this being Italy, a full home-cooked meal is served each day.  Today he ate minestrone (or, as Gio put it, "pasta with soup on top"), erbezzoni (sort of like a spinach pizza), and apples.  And for a full disclosure- he came home and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for himself- that's my good old half-American boy for you.
Here are some images from the past few days....

We go down the driveway to visit the two construction sites most evenings.  The same man who built our house is now finishing up two more- one for Paolo's best friend Angelo (see the last post) and the other for the owner of the local pizza restaurant.  To say that we are happy about our new neighbors is an understatement!

Our builder, Giuseppe, owns this fabulous excavator.  I keep calling it a digger and Gio, much annoyed by his mother's general lack of knowledge about construction vehicles (and dinosaurs, for that matter), corrects me, "No no no, Mama, this is an EX-ca-va-TOR!!!"

Enzo comes along with us on our adventures, though at this time of night he usually heads off to join his canine gang for a bit of neighborhood hooliganism. 

Taking a thumb & Big Tom break. 

This morning I parked in front of a butcher.  Yes, horse meat is popular here.  No, I did not buy any.  

Today's excitement was this fantastic cement mixer that appeared just at nap time.  Gio was very curious about the "crane hose" that was pouring cement around the foundation.  Needless to say, we had to go down and investigate.  And, yes, nap time was seriously delayed.  

The sad news is that Gio's beloved "Zia Silvana" (Paolo's mother's sister) fell last weekend and broke her arm and hip.  She was playing soccer with Gio at the time.  While the arrival of an ambulance and a visit to the ER was exciting for Gio, he was mostly very worried and upset about the fall.  He woke up on Sunday morning and came running downstairs with a few band-aids in his hand asking to go back to the hospital.  Once there, he put them on her cast and declared her "all better."  I wish we all had such an optimistic view of the world.  

Today we visited Silvana after school.  She had surgery on her hip on Tuesday that went very well and is, as you can see, already sitting up.  Gio added a few more band-aids.  He asked when they could play soccer again.  Hmmm.....