giornata tipica di Tina, pommeriggio

...12:30-1:30 a civilized pranzo means that food is hot, probably two courses, and may come with a glass of wine and a little espresso afterwards. Honestly, eating like this most days is going to be hard to give up. And it’s not just the food itself, it’s the pace. On Tuesdays and Fridays Maddy and Gus have a half day for school and they come home for Pranzo. We have taken to eating together and then leaving homework until at least 2- we all get to eat and rest. It’s very humane.

1:30-3:45 On days when the kids have a full day of school, this is usually my time to bake and or cook. I bake bread, pizza dough, cookies (Italian or American) most weeks. Our landlady lent us a bread machine for the year and it gets lots of exercise. Many of the other moms from school and sports have one and there was a flurry of recipe exchanges revolving around this handy 'eletrodomestico' a few months back. Part of the reason bread machines are so popular now is that bread has gotten expensive relative to salaries (especially for retired people), and Italians are looking for ways to keep eating the way they have without spending more and more for it. Among the mamme, there was a debate about which reason to have a breadmachine was the most compelling: saving money, using the highest quality flour but for a reasonable price, or having that lovely fresh-bread small in your house. I think cheapest bread won.

On days the kids come home early from school, this time (2:00-dinnertime, even) is for homework- especially Tuesdays. There is a basic expectation that school is short two days a week and that you get one day off from school entirely (Saturdays, that is. Sunday is THE day of rest and family time) so that you can do homework. This is true to a smaller degree even for 1st graders. I think the idea is that in high school and at the university this is the way things are, so the earlier you get kids trained to be 'serious students,' the better. I find myself asking often if I'm the only one who has a hard time getting her kids to study independently for 4-10 hours as week (I'd estimate 4 hours is Gus' work load and 10 is Maddy's). Among the mamme there are three common responses to this persistent question: 1) You have a stay-at-home parent who's part time job it is to supervise hours of homework, painful or not, reasonable or not, because school success is important, 2) you decide the teachers have exaggerated expectations and you require your children to do, say, 2 out of 10 pages of homework, or 3) you do (or mostly do, spending sometimes a few hours a week) your children's homework with and even for them. In fact, most mamme I know do all three to varying degrees. We have a retired teacher friend who gives Gus private tutoring, I asked her what the homework situation was like from the teacher's point of view. She said some students did it all, some did none, and that you'd never see everyone truly on the same page. We get periodic reports from the teachers about our children's classes and the two most common complaints are about classroom behavior and homework completion. As far as I can tell, there is incessant complaining on both sides, but nothing I would call progress.

4:45-8:00 three days a week this is sports time. The actual hours vary for Gus and Maddy, they each have about 3 hours of sports divided into two evenings. Monday Maddy has pallavolo (volleyball) from 6:30-8, Tuesday Gus has pallacanestro from 5:45-7, Thursday is pallavolo for Maddy from 5-6:30 and pallacanestro for Gus from 5:45-7. If you're a parent, you probably noticed something there- managing two kid sports overlapping is not easy. I was worried at first, but it turns out the two gyms are about two blocks apart, and Maddy can walk over and meet me at pallacanestro when pallavolo is over. I love this part of living in a small town- nothing is ever more than a seven minute drive away. Ahhh!

On a good day, I'm at my casalinga (housewife) best and I have pre-prepared dinner to just shy of done during homework, so that when we get back from sports I can serve things up quickly. Many of you know that Gibbs is not only a great cook, but also a willing one. At the beginning of the year, he usually made dinner while we were at sports. He still does sometimes, I just don't mention it to the mamme anymore. Let's just say, there aren't many men like Gibbs here, and as my parents used to say, "don't shout and wave it about..."

8:00-9:00, on average, is our dinnertime. We have fallen into the typical Italian pattern of eating pasta nearly every day in some form, however, I'd say we eat less at a time than we used to. We sometimes have two courses, the second one usually includes meat (again, smaller quantities than before). Our new favorite dessert is fruit and cheese. Some nights we are not in the mood to cook anything fancy, so it's left-overs or snacky dinner (equally unpopular among Italians, generally speaking...) A typical dinner for a busy Italian family is minestrone made with chicken or beef stock (or both), boiled cheese rinds (you don't eat them, but they do add a nice flavor and thicken it a little), beans and loads of veggies.

9-ish- bedtime for the kids. Sometimes we have the chance to listen to Gibbs read a little Harry Potter in Italian (we are in the middle of book 2). Our kids go to bed earlier than most of Maddy and Gus' classmates, but a full hour later than they used to at home. I don't know how the others avoid serious sleep-deprivation.

9:30-11:30 Gibbs and I hang out, sometimes chatting, sometimes watching movies or shows (american, mostly) on TV. We only get 1 channel well, so options are limited (one of the difficulties of living in the hills).