Thank You

Thank you all for your support, thoughts, and prayers regarding my father's passing.

Grazie a tutti per il vostro sostegno, pensieri e preghiere in merito alla scomparsa di mio padre.

This Thank You Card was designed by my mother, just the way she thought my father would have liked it.

Questo biglietto di ringraziamento e' stato creato da mia mamma, proprio come pensava che mio padre l'avrebbe desiderato.

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First Tooth... to fall OFF, that is.

Well, catching up on old posts isn't working very well, as I'm sure you've all noticed. In the meantime, I feel I'm missing out on posting current events in the Peltier household. Moral of the story: you'll just have to live with nonchronological posts on our blogs. Better than no posts at all, right?

On Saturday (March 13, 2010) we had one such Peltier event that is just too big to let it slip by (i.e., wait until I get all caught up with old posts and then post about this): Aurora lost her very first tooth.

She's been impatiently waiting to lose a tooth just like all the other kids in kindergarten. She obviously doesn't understand the fact that she's one of the youngest in her group, being born at the end of September. To her, everyone is losing teeth, so why isn't she? (...Great! Dealing with peer pressure, already.) A few weeks ago, two of her bottom front teeth started wobbling (one more than the other), and ever since then her impatience has become even worse. In fact, she developed an obsession with touching her mouth, and when told (repeatedly) to stop, her reply has consistently been: "I'm just checking to see if my tooth is still there!"

On Saturday, we were driving to go visit Nonno Emi in the hospital. It was snack time, and I handed Aurora a banana. She had one big mouthful as her last bite when she handed me her banana peel to toss out. As soon as she swallowed her last bite, there was a moment of silence followed by: "Mamma! My tooth! It's not there anymore! I'm so HAPPY!"

It was a good thing we were still driving on our little lone mountain road, so that we didn't cause any major traffic jam or accident. We basically stopped the car in the middle of the road to look at her missing tooth, celebrate, and take the following picture of one happy girl:



Unfortunately, the long-awaited first tooth was never meant to be with us without having to wear rubber gloves and requiring some digging (if you catch my drift). Thankfully, we had already prepared Aurora for the possibility that she may swallow it, so I think Benjamin and I were the ones most disappointed at not being able to keep the memento. Aurora quickly tried to cheer us up and said, "That's OK! The tooth fairy is going to leave me money anyway." She's got the system down already.

Aurora wrote a note (helped by her father) and put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy that night. It read, "Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost my tooth but I think I swallowed it. Love, Aurora." In the morning, Aurora was proud to find a shiny two-franc coin under her pillow. She's been carrying it around ever since.

As I was typing this and told Aurora what I was writing, she said, "Mamma, if you wanted to keep my tooth, I should have pooped outside and you could have hosed it down."

Why didn't I think of that myself??

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July 4, 2009: Working with Nonno Emi

A week after getting to Switzerland and after digesting the news about my father's health a bit, some of his first thoughts were directed toward all the things that he wanted to accomplish in the short term, "just in case" he wouldn't have a chance to do things later. If you know my dad, you'll know that he isn't a man of thoughts and words alone: his thoughts quickly became actions. Here is Benjamin helping him put up a roof over the outside heating pump so it wouldn't freeze in the winter anymore. The job got done rather quickly. I wish I had a picture of the finished product, but that will have to wait since now everything is covered in snow. By the way, let me add here that my dad had just been through major stomach surgery the week before, and here he is, unstoppable.


Aurora thought she might hang out with them, so she brought some of her favorite toys outside.


But playing didn't last long as she quickly became fascinated with the power drill that Papi and Nonno were using and convinced her grandpa to let her have a turn.


Here's a video of it:



I'm amazed at the evolution of Aurora's language skills over the last few months. Her Italian has just skyrocketed since this video was made. :)

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