Dangerous Liaisons - Questo e' un Amore Pericoloso

I have not been blogging much recently because in addition to designing a website (it is live now!), I have been searching for a nice and inexpensive place in Italy where my husband can work online and where the three of us can spend a month without having to hear English or German so that William can learn Italian. What else? I have organized a couple of events for kids, I have played with the three pigs and the bad wolf nearly every day and I have been teaching Italian on Monday night. Isn't this enough to fill someone's life? No, it isn't. In addition to all this, I have had a painful love affair. Yes, don't be shocked, it happens to everyone. You might think I am crazy talking about it here but I feel I have gone crazy and need to tell the world all about it.

Typical! 
Sweet at the beginning: I was kissing him and he was kissing me back, all day long.
Then it quickly became...
Intense: I could smell him hours after my last contact with him.
Addictive: I couldn't be happy when I was not getting kisses. Not so wonderful!
Strong: the feeling went through my skin and it started giving me a stomach ache
Obsessive: I couldn't stop thinking about him
Cruel: I felt I would give up everything for a kiss, yet he was no longer kissing me. He was kissing a stranger instead!

Deceptive: I was doing whatever he was asking me to do, hoping that I would get his old sweet kisses. No, he continued to reject me!

Threatening: I threatened to leave. He said "NO!", "NO!", "NO!" and left. I even put him upside down, waiting for him to give up and give me a kiss. Nothing.

Stubborn: "NO! NO! NO!", this is all I am getting now.

I was destroyed. I wanted to cry.

Bad Boy William

I don't know who was more heart broken, whether it was John (my husband) or me, but a week ago, we both heard "AWUA'"!, "AWUA'"!, "AWUA'"!, "AWUA'"!. Guess what? William was kissing the penguin, the stuffed animal I gave him for Christmas! Still no kisses for us. He now kisses the damned penguin every day when he wakes up in the morning. And this is what John and I ended up doing out of desperation (by the way, nobody tells you that this is what happens when you have children):

John and I started kissing with the loud "AWUA''" sounds that William used to make! And William finally gave us a kiss. So worth it! We thought we had finally found the secret for getting those special wet kisses only William could give us but the little monster shook his head and went back to saying "NO!", "NO!", "NO!", sharp and loud.

John at 1 am: "It's all over, he will not kiss us again"
Me: "What sort of affair did we get into?"
John: "Wait, perhaps we put too many blankets on him!"

I thought his hostile reaction was only about giving us kisses then I started seeing a pattern. William was saying "NO!" to almost everything: to the food I was giving him, to the water bottle, to the dirty diaper I was trying to change, to the star shaped lamp that was not switched on - he loves that! -, to me not giving him his shoes to sleep with in bed and yesterday even to me giving him one banana instead of another! I swear, they were exactly the same.

Now tell me, have we been hit by the terrible twos?

William, mi dai un bacio?

Un bacino, per favore! NO? NO? NO? NO?


Mmm, here is your lunch William!
NO!

Apparently, there is a secret for successfully dealing with the cruelty of a two year old child. It is John who found it. It is called: playing! Trust me, it works! This is what John ended up doing at the end to get hugs and kisses. He started calling William "SALCICCIA!" (which in Italian translates into sausage) with wide open arms, while waiting for William to go hug him. Now when John does that, the little cruel guy runs as fast as he can to hug (and occasionally kiss) his dad. Magic, it works!  I have to come up with something similar to get the little monster to kiss me, otherwise my life is over.