Our attic--ready for nipotini to play, sleep and learn of Pinocchio

I don’t usually post mostly photographic blog entries, but after we furnished the attic with beds in anticipation of a visit with Dan, Sandy, their four kids and Mili, Lucy asked me to snap some photos. I though they were worth sharing here, if for no other reason than posterity. Our attic has come such a long way from when we first moved in three years ago.

One of the first things Lucy said in 2015 after she mounted the shaky fold-down ladder and crawled in under the low overhanging beam is that we could clean this up so our grandchildren—nipoti in Italian—could sleep up here. If you had seen the attic then, you would know her statement showed some vision, and we can’t be more pleased to see that the dream has become reality.

The roof is still a bit low for the adults, but the attic is cozy, clean, bright, dry and warm. One of the rooms has flooring with roads and a small town on which the kids can drive their toy cars. Every bed has a reading lamp. There’s a small padded chair just the right size for children from age 2 to 8, and other larger chairs and tables. Skylights can be opened to let in breezes, which will be important to overcome the summer heat.

For some perspective, here's our once leaky attic in 2017.

Now the family has arrived, and Mili and four nipotini are soundly sleeping as I write. Before they went to sleep, Lucy and I read them two chapters from The Adventures of Pinocchio—the real book, not the Disney version. Pinocchio is an important figure here in the Valdinievole, since author Carlo Collodi grew up only a few miles away, and if you open the skylights on the east side of the attic, you can see the town of Collodi on a nearby hillside. I’m sure that if the late Carlo Collodi could look back from there and see inside our attic, he’d be pleased to see that his tale, written in 1883, is still being enjoyed by today’s children.