General Update 08/09/08

It's been a while since I updated everyone on our progress, things have been pretty hectic here as you can imagine!

Matteo is now almost 9 months old. He is growing at an amazing rate and developing into a real character. He continues to be a big hit with our family, friends, neighbours and most complete strangers we meet! The Italians are great with kids and everyone in our nearest town knows him, he also enjoys meals out at several of our local restaurants where he is always made very welcome & is now progressing to sitting in a high chair & eating our breadsticks rather than sleeping in his pram, very Italian! He is also enjoying going swimming although the local pool has been closed for the last few weeks, it re-opens this week so he is looking forward to getting back in the water!

Work on the house is moving forward although much slower than we had hoped as Andy is working away from home so much he rarely has time to do anything & when he is here he is usually too shattered to do much. With a little help from family we have managed to get our bedroom decorated and we have moved in so Matteo now has his own bedroom, although it isn't finished! We almost have a kitchen minus the worktops, we are still in discussions with Ikea re the worktops and have been since May! We have all our doors and windows in now and have just had someone to measure up for railings for the balconies and stairs so hopefully they will arrive in the next 4-6 weeks. We also have our radiators in now but they still need commissioning, hopefully they will be up and running before it gets cold. Andy is still sanding and treating ceilings at every opportunity, he is currently working downstairs in the apartments. We are also trying to get the bathrooms into a working state, unfortunately the builder left them in quite a mess and we are having to un-do quite a lot of his work and put it right. In between all of this we are also trying to get the outside space into some sort of order before the winter as it was very muddy outside last year.

In between Andy's work, looking after Matteo & work on the house we also manage to get out and about a bit (although it generally involves DIY shopping!) and we have been to quite a few local festas this summer (more to follow).