I am sure most of you find that young children instinctively give a role to their adults in their mind; it usually is what they perceive one particular adult does the most. In our case it was like: mommy goes to the supermarket and papa’ (dad) can fix it!

Finally, after 73 years of drought, my husband’s family had a baby girl! And I had my May girl! Everybody was a winner. Our little boy, always very curios and observant, while I was changing his baby sister’s diaper one day noticed that something was amiss. “Mommy, she doesn’t have a birillino!” (little pin), he told me surprised and somewhat concerned; in his experience that was a piece she definitely couldn’t function without! Well, he was barely two, what was I going to say? “OH, no! I must have forgotten to put it there while she was in my tummy.” “Don’t worry mommy, we go to the supermarket and we buy one!” was his reassuring answer. “And papa’ can fix it!” Satisfied of the brilliant solution he had just thought of, he went back to his toys. Problem solved!*

Tings where not always smooth after we brought his baby sister home from the hospital. If at the beginning she was a peculiar novelty that fueled his endless curiosity, pieces missing and all, eventually he realized that she was there to stay. On second thought: couldn’t she be returned to the factory like we had done with the fire engine truck that had arrived with out one wheel?!

*On the other side of the coin, like we say in Italy, when one of my younger sisters, also barely two, saw our mother change our baby brother’s diaper, with eyes out of their orbit alerted her, “MAMMA! Look where he has a ditino!” (little finger). In her experience that was an absolutely superfluous item he was delivered with! Missing birillini, superfluous ditini: how confusing!