Marie, Alberto,
Tobia, Olivia and Filippo.
stories of normalcy #5
Marie, Alberto, Tobia, Olivia, Filippo: 5 heads, 5 smiles, 5 different ways of living everyday life and lots of sharing, the moments of fun, play, tenderness, laughter. I like a large family: it is cheerful, lively, colorful!
Normalcy for Marie is a routine made up of bike rides with the children to school, outings, laughing together, entrepreneurship and blogging, cuddling in the big bed with the kids…
Marie is a mom, Marie is a former model and blogger, who after a thousand vicissitudes, travels and relocations has found love with Alberto, her husband.
Her days are hectic, between children, her work as a digital entrepreneur with her instagram account and blog “easymomswissmade“, but in talking she tells me how much she loves being a mom, how much she enjoys it.
I ask her how she and her husband met.
She smiles and tells me:
“Alberto and I met on Facebook, he has a design studio, I had a modeling agency at the time… it must have been 2008 or 2009: he was looking for a model for the Geneva Motor Show… then one thing led to another, after a few months we met and boh… he was ideal on paper, I trusted my instincts and we found each other “-she continues-“Now we live in downtown Turin, I’m Swiss, I still have a lot there, but our life is here.”
Let’s talk about the family routine, divided among the thousands of commitments they have, their “rituals of normalcy.”
“I love being a full-time mom; however, I have to split my time into 4! During the week with the kids I do a lot: they all have their own needs, I often feel guilty because some of their friends are only children, so they do whatever they want. My husband helps me, but I’m on my own during the day….
think that when they were babies I had one in the baby carrier and two with the twins! While I was in the part I didn’t feel like I was doing an exceptional thing…now I actually realize that I was totally devoted to them!”
– She smiles and her eyes light up, remembering her children so young, then continues –
“at this age I have a hard time saying no, I had pretty strict family, when “it was no it was no!”… I grew up already rebellious, I like to concede things to the kids.For example, they ask us to ride a bike or scooter to school and we every morning in the back, running with our backpacks… they are overjoyed for 800 meters done on the bike! For us it is a struggle, but I try to accommodate them. Being a mom is the most normal thing in the world, I’ve always wanted it, I’ve wanted it since the age of 16! “
– you can really see that it is her role, the role of a mom! Let’s get on with the talk and I ask her to tell me about a typical day.
“So our routine-I wake up at 6 a.m., turn on the pc. And check emails. Then coffee and off we go, the day begins! The last one to get up is my husband. In a hurry we all go to school. Alberto and I have this routine, we carve out 15 minutes together without kids, have coffee at the café, just the two of us, every morning. Then I work, my work takes a lot out of me.
The blog was born when the little one was one year old. I was telling about us, about my being a mom … it was born spontaneously then when I realized that being a mom blogger was the trend of the moment I got tired and during the lockdown I changed my mind. I went back to modeling at age 45, chronicling niche brands with photos and videos. My children, I expose them and used to expose them on social media, but clearly they are less in the foreground now because I talk about fashion. “
– It opens up a discussion about the lockdown, how everything at that time was revolutionized, for many of us.
“During the lockdown everything changed. Schedules got messed up and we hardly go back with the kids (To my husband’s delight!). Since the lockdown we keep a ritual: either on Wednesdays or Thursdays we eat sandwiches from the Mac in front of the TV, watching Italia’s got talent, Masterchef, XFactor etc. in the background… When dad is away for work or arrives late we watch a movie straight to bed and we all stay together in the big bed. They like it and so do I!
We talk about vacations, trips, weekends –
“In winter we go skiing, we go on trips and things dedicated to children, some of it is also related to my work: seeing the castle with the kids, a trip to the Langhe, a park where the kids play… We take traveling vacations, our way do travel is this. We have taken them to Puglia, to Brittany For example: with the minivan, a bit of a gypsy, every other day we would move. That’s how I am, I struggle a little bit even planning vacations. In the end, babies do what you do, they grow with your concept, they are curious.”
We close our talk by talking about photography:
“Ever since I was a little girl I’ve loved taking pictures, I always had all the albums, I take pictures and photograph! I print everything! They used to tease me in the family: with the birth of the third child I tripled the number of photos, I have an industrial amount of them, the kids love to look at them again they go crazy!
I like natural, spontaneous photographs, everyday scenes… I even wrote a blog post about this, about how important it is to have your own memories, memories in photography!”
