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Hey, wait a minute. Those aren’t chestnuts…those are huge slabs of beef! This is shaping up to be my type of party!
For a whole number of reasons, the kids and I don’t get out much, but we did receive a much appreciated invitation to spend New Year’s Eve with friends Simona, Giuseppe, and their son Pietro. Simona and Giuseppe live nearby, but they have a place in the mountains as well.
This is part of what was once a sheep herders’ enclave. My friends own the far end of this building, and have turned it into a really lovely retreat. Located in the Apennine Mountains, it’s perfect for ski vacations during the winter, or hiking in the summer.
Playing board games on New Year's Eve.
Whoa! Looks like someone got too close to the fireplace!
Apparently ‘buring the witch’ is a local custom; their version of ‘out with the old, in with the new.’ The witch in question is no one we knew, so no harm done.
And she was just old clothes stuffed with newspaper and hay anyway.
There was a blizzard at the time, so copious amounts of gasoline were required to get things started. Just the sort of thing to get us all arrested Stateside.
Here’s another disturbing photo of what appears to be immolation, but which is in fact merely the Italian version of Guy Fawkes Night, with resident arsonist Giuseppe in the foreground.
For God's sake! Drop and roll!
New Year’s Day proved to be infinitely less pyrotechnic.
That’s Pietro on the sled, waiting his turn, and Alex on his way back up the hill. Giuseppe and Lia are at the bottom of the hill, getting hats and scarves sorted out after a tumultuous ride down the slope.
My cherub son on a sled.
Lia’s turn.
Can I just say I would have killed for a treehouse like this when I was a kid? To be honest, I still would.
A good start to what we hope will be a good year!
This is one good kid, let me tell you.
The EEG technician told Lia to sit still with her eyes closed, and that’s precisely what she did. She looks like she’s sleeping, but it’s actually just a Zen state of meditation.
I was very proud of her, of course, but then she outdid herslf by staying completely immobile during the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) as well. That was the one that had me worried, not so much for the potential outcome, but because they had planned to sedate her. In the end, they decided to try it without sedation, and Lia performed like a little champ.
The results of both exams show that she does not have epilepsy (not that we feared she did) and no brain damage despite the complications surrounding her premature birth. I’m honestly not sure what comes next, or what these results will mean to the doctors trying to determine why a bright, deaf seven year old who has had speech therapy since she was 6 months old, still speaks so little.
“Are you happy with the results?” I asked the neurologist.
“Yes, I am,” he said, “but I don’t know whether or not Lia’s other doctors will be. I’m happy because there’s nothing there that needs the sort of help I can offer, but that just means the other doctors still have a lot of work to do to figure out what’s wrong.”
Hear that, doctors? Get to it!
Keep Lia in your thoughts today, as tests are run (MRI, EEG) to find out what’s going on in that pretty little head of hers.
(No updates until Friday, at the earliest, because we’ll be spending the night at the hospital.)
I have toyed with the idea of writing a blog for quite some time, but now just suddenly seems like the moment. I want a better way to stay in touch with people, I want a creative outlet, I want what is essentially a scrapbook / journal of my life. So here we go!
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