September 1^st – Listening to our new little reader entertain her sister with a Seuss classic.

September 2^nd – Getting treated to an exclusive performance of The Best Circus Show EVER!!! with the world-famous ringmasters (and tightrope walkers and clowns and trapeze artists and magicians and unicyclists) Natalie and Sophie.

September 3^rd – Watching the follow-up to the circus show: The Best Puppet Show EVER!!! (It was.)

September 4^th – Finally checking out the local library that looks like a pink spaceship—to the girls’ delight—and bringing home a stack of storytimes.

September 5^th – Appreciating how this week’s preacher included the Sunday-schoolless kids in the sermon and kept it short and relevant… as opposed to last week’s long droning discourse about Tamar and Judah. (The mind, it boggles.)

September 6^th – Getting a fresh burst of excitement about this fall when Sophie exclaimed, “Natalie and I are about to go to school, and Mommy’s going to write and write and write! And make lunch!”

September 7^th – Trying very, very hard not to giggle at the dinner table as the girls seriously discussed the perils of pooping.

September 8^th – The usually horrible Festa dell’Unità playing Stevie Wonder through our open windows just when I needed a dose of happy.

September 9^th – Watching a marathon of the girls’ baby videos with them, no matter how desperately it makes me want to cry.

September 10^th – Introducing the girls to the magic of Totoro.

September 11^th – Ending a full day of shopping with… more shopping, and speculating about all the fun memories the girls will make in their new fall clothes.

September 12^th – Turning a failed picnic into an afternoon of games and relaxed conversation with one of our favorite families.

September 13^th – Sending two thrilled little girls straight into the arms of their favorite teacher at school.

September 14^th – Meeting the words I’ve been trying to find for years as they tumbled out of my fingers onto the page; mornings like this are why I write.

September 15^th – Seeing evidence of my sweet girls’ care for our family and each other in action.

September 16^th – Enjoying roasted tomato soup with a supersized helping of friendship.

September 17^th – Snuggling up for a movie night with my favorite husband.

September 18^th – Taking Natalie out for a mom-daughter shopping date and chatting up a storm.

September 19^th – Indulging my inner heathen and taking a much-needed day to relax and watch the clouds blow by.

September 20^th – Squelching my fear of failure and utter hatred for running to complete nearly three kilometers with my longsuffering Dan.

September 21^st – Easing back into teaching English and remembering how much I really do enjoy it.

September 22^nd – Accepting a last-minute playdate invitation and getting to know the warm and bubbly woman who is Natalie’s future mother-in-law.

September 23^rd – Kissing my girls goodbye and watching them gallop hand-in-hand to their classroom, giggling all the way.

September 24^th – Discovering an entire group of friends who share my background and are working together to forge a future full ofhope.

September 25^th – Baking illegal chocolate cake with plenty of sticky-fingered help.

September 26^th – Cracking up with the rest of the church band after an increasingly awkward list of song selections, including the same one called twice in a row.

September 27^th – Being treated to the most delicious pretend picnic of all time by my dear Sophie who came home sick from school.

September 28^th – Having a little dance party with myself to this song while putting on my makeup.

May 1^st – Spending the day at a soccer tournament then a dinner party we had forgotten about until the last minute, treasuring the friendships we’ve made since moving here.

May 2^nd – Slipping out of a sermon that interested me not a bit to chat with other moms in our church’s unofficial nursery.

May 3^rd – Rooting out the scary dust bunnies (and elephants) from under the girls’ bedroom furniture and discovering beloved lost toys in the process.

May 4^th – Finding a quiet stretch of afternoon for yoga and jasmine green tea.

May 5^th – Being ordered onto a tiny plastic chair by Sophie for an impromptu picnic of plastic pie doused in invisible milk and sixteen cups of pretend coffee, all of which were hers.

May 6^th – Refilling my favorite pink vase with fresh-picked daisies from our little balcony garden.

May 7^th – Staying up two hours past bedtime for a round of Settlers with friends… then staying up another two hours for a second round because none of us was psychologically capable of stopping at one.

May 8^th – Sleeping until noon and curing the subsequent daze with pancakes.

May 9^th – Finding the breakfast table loaded with hand-drawn Mother’s Day cards and our new tent—a promise of camping adventures this summer with the dear little family that made me a mother.

May 10^th – Being the first recipient of Natalie’s newly-invented “flower kiss” (patent pending).

May 11^th – Easily revising an essay, usually my most hated job ever.

May 12^th – Rocking my tired baby to sleep and forgetting for a few magical moments that she’s not actually a baby anymore.

May 13^th – Attending a friend’s piano concert and being swept away by her thunderous interpretation of Chopin.

May 14^th – Going through our photos from the last couple of years and savoring each sweet, silly moment captured.

May 15^th – Helping the girls introduce their Uncle Michael to basketball… on the Wii!

May 16^th – Biting into melt-in-your-mouth Snickerdoodles hot from the oven.

May 17^th – Amusing myself throughout the day with the stupidity of a neighborhood bird who was overcome with the need to fly through our balcony door.

May 18^th – Making a tough decision and shortly realizing it was unquestionably the right one.

May 19^th – Trying out a new video game with Dan and losing track of time like we used to back in our Unreal days.

May 20^th – Befriending another mom at Natalie’s English class’s open house and finding myself one step closer to belonging here.

May 21^st – Honoring our viral mint with afternoon mojitos on the balcony.

May 22^nd – Discovering that the Flower Show is less a floral display and more a place to watch Venus Flytraps in action, stock up on obscure spices, and chat with friends while pretending not to see our daughters eating a meal worth of piadina samples.

May 23^rd – Glancing up from our gardening work to see skydivers like colorful butterflies parachuting into the stadium just below our house.

May 24^th – Catching up on my correspondence, taking the time to connect with loved ones who may be out of sight but not out of mind.

May 25^th – Spending a wonderful evening with friends we’ thought we’d lost.

May 26^th – Launching Popsiquest 2010, a highly yummy research endeavor with the girls for the best popsicles in town.

May 27^th – Sitting down to have six years’ worth of mysteries answered in the “LOST” finale. (The anticipation turned out to be more satisfying than the actual watching, unfortunately.)

May 28^th – Using a wretched head cold as an excuse to spend the afternoon in bed listening to This American Life and looking through family photos.

May 29^th – Beating sickness with a game night and my self-prescribed remedy of salted fudge brownies.

May 30^th – Tucking a pair of apple-scented girls into their beds early, leaving a deliciously long evening to spend with their daddy.

May 31^st – Flouting a [mistakenly] dire weather forecast by spending the afternoon in front of an open window, soaking up every sun-tinted breeze.

April 1^st – Sneaking up on two beautiful little ballerinas in a computer game trance.

April 2^nd – Throwing open the windows and letting spring come bounding inside.

April 3^rd – Devouring Frito Pie and day-before-Easter chocolate in our new tent and feeling quite at home.

April 4^th – Hiding eggs full of sugary treasures around our campsite for the girls to run and dance and climb and twirl and stumble upon throughout the morning.

April 5^th – Ordering drinks at Natalie’s 2,000-year-old thermopolium in downtown Pompeii.

April 6^th – Unloading a haul of bright, zesty Sorrento lemons and imagining the many ways we’ll enjoy them this spring.

April 7^th – All of us feeling more relieved that we realized to swing back into our weekday routines.

April 8^th – Commencing Operation Limoncello 2010 with visions of sparkling Christmas gifts dancing in our heads.

April 9^th – Falling asleep after a difficult day on my beloved mattress with my beloved husband and a new day waiting in the wings.

April 10^th – Picking out the brightest, friendliest flowers we could find [on sale] to color in-between the lines on our balcony.

April 11^th – Spying on the girls as they channeled their engineer dad and constructing amazing, imaginative worlds out of Duplos.

April 12^th – While flipping television channels just before bed, stumbling onto an incredible burping rock duo and falling in love with Italian programming all over again.

April 13^th – Being quite literally floored by a kiss attack from Sophie.

April 14^th – Finally finding the words that had been eluding me all week and revising my position on life being over, etc.

April 15^th – Saying good morning to the new flowers blooming and thriving and throwing wild tea parties in their planters.

April 16^th – Hand-writing a letter in a pool of pure golden sunshine on the balcony.

April 17^th – After breathing in clouds of fresh pollen all day long, realizing my eyes don’t itch and my sinuses haven’t closed and I’m not tempted to gouge out my skull with a salad fork; thank you, allergy vaccinations!

April 18^th – Staying after church to eat gnocchi and lemon mousse and catch up with friends we haven’t seen in too long.

April 19^th – Leaving the dishes to their own devices and playing a hilarious game of kickball in the backyard with the girls.

April 20^th – Riding the essay submission high, like pot-laced caffeine with extra sprinkles.

April 21^st – Butchering a favorite children’s song into a potty-time ditty to the girls’ utter amusement (and their father’s utter head-shaking).

April 22^nd – Being treated like the customer of the decade by a sweet saleslady at the ritzy, glitzy profumeria while I rooted through the discount bin for their cheapest lime-grapefruit lotion.

April 23^rd – Resurrecting a childhood favorite and playing Giddyup Little Horsey until the girls collapsed from laughter.

April 24^th – Spending some quality time in the pages of The Princess Bride after far too long apart.

April 25^th – Staying up half an hour too late and being rewarded with a Liberation Day fireworks show.

April 26^th – Cheering on my timid Natalie as she rode her bicycle around and around the balcony, crashing and jumping back up with a grin of accomplishment.

April 27^th – Getting a delightful letter in the mail from an old friend.

April 28^th – Swinging at the otherwise empty playground with Sophie after early-morning errands.

April 29^th – Wishing I had some fresh asparagus to fix with lunch and then being completely surprised by a friend who stopped by mid-morning simply to bring me a beautiful bouquet… of asparagus.

April 30^th – Ending up €1.39 short at the grocery store but having a new friend unexpectedly show up in line behind me and pay before I realized what she was doing; closing out the month remembering to believe in little miracles.

March 1^st – Whiling away the first warm afternoon of the year at the playground, meeting new friends, and sharing a fabulous pinecone stew.

March 2^nd – Catching up on This American Life while concocting a pink pudding birthday cake.

March 3^rd – Introducing my brand new five-year-old to the cherished Ingalls family.

March 4^th – Rocking out to “nerdy music”—They Might Be Giants—at Natalie’s request and catching her singing along to Meet the Elements, “Come on, come on, and meet the elephants!”

March 5^th – Bundling up and baking cupcakes to keep warm as our heater completed union negotiations.

March 6^th – Waking up to both girls in bed with us, discussing loudly and with giggles a-plenty which one of us was a king (Sophie), which one was a princess (Natalie), which one was a queen (Mommy), and which one was a mermaid (Sophie again). (After some debate, it was agreed Daddy could be co-king.)

March 7^th – Sharing the hilariously traumatic family experience of making bracelets with Natalie’s new, über-cheap jewelry wand.

March 8^th – Walking in on Sophie bouncing up and down and singing Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” on the potty.

March 9^th – Submitting my first short story in over a year.

March 10^th – Nibbling fresh strawberries, sipping tea, and giggling as the girls from Bible study launched into an in-depth discussion of boob jobs.

March 11^th –Spotting a bed of exuberant daffodils blooming in a neighbor’s garden.

March 12^th – Catching the look on Dan’s face when he heard me singing TMBG’s “Violin-lin-lin” to the girls.

March 13^th – Sinking into the couch with my husband and the passengers of Oceanic 815 after a long day of cleaning.

March 14^th – Hosting the kind of long, social lunch that I’ve so often enjoyed in Italian homes.

March 15^th – Starting my daily to-do list with “Write HGTV back” and feeling a brief celebrity glow.

March 16^th – Taking a big bite of New Orleans’ style banana pudding and tasting the stars align.

March 17^th – Saluting the Irish American spirit with homemade shamrock shakes.

March 18^th – Filling our day with the fairy-tale scent of baking cookies.

March 19^th – Zipping up the last suitcase with plenty of time left for drinks and an early bedtime—miraculous, this!

March 20^th – Winding through breathtakingly beautiful mountain passes on our way to the ski resort.

March 21^st – Watching the girls’ heads spiral into the stratosphere from the joy of snow (and, one hour later, plunge into the depths of despair over wet socks and imminent naptime).

March 22^nd – Playing Taboo with friends once we were all so tired that cry-laughing hilarity was guaranteed.

March 23^rd – Hearing the girls crack up over old Tom & Jerry cartoons like I did as a child.

March 24^th – Flying down the mountainside on fresh snow glittering in the early morning sunshine.

March 25^th – Braving a foggy mountainside journey on my board for the second time in a week and reveling in the superhero rush when I made it.

March 26^th – Getting several hours of guilt-free reading time out of my otherwise undesirable back seat station during our drive back to Perugia.

March 27^th – Watching a perfect double rainbow arch across the valley below our house.

March 28^th – Fashioning a sweet Mommy-Natalie date out of a routine trip to the grocery store.

March 29^th – Catching the backyard trees in the act of blooming.

March 30^th – Inviting Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles to breakfast. (We should do this every day.)

March 31^st – Glimpsing bedtime stories in the late-evening clouds and their vivid incantations of blue.