Month: March 2011

Well, who knows what that means: Neve always says it when she’s playing with unlocking the coloured doors with the coloured keys of the old fit-the-blocks toy of Lola’s.

She says more and more stuff which is perfectly intelligible (or thereabouts), including:

1. ciao, ciao Zia (or Zio)
2. ciao Nonna
3. Garku (Marco)
4. Giia, giia dadi (Giro, giro tondo)
5. Up hee-ya
6. Jump!
7. juice
8. toast
9. chis (cheese)

When Luna growls at Neve, Neve growls back. And she’ll tell her, “No!” and point her to her bed. She has no fear.

She loves all her relatives and greets everyone with a big smile and will often run up for a hug. She very happily goes off with anyone (well, we haven’t tried with strangers) and will often wander off to seek Morena or Giada. In fact, she will often just wander off — usually to be found at the bottom of the ramp, or playing in the basment.

I took the stabilisers off Lola’s bike today and then we spent a half hour riding up and down the road outside Assunta’s house. I held Lola around the chest, able to steady her and ready to catch her if needed, but also able to let her go when she had balance.

Lola was a little nervous and periodically told me she was a bit scared; she kept going gamely for quite a while, though, and would often obtain enough balance for me to be able to relax my hold on her.

A few more days of that and she may begin to have confidence in her balance.

Well, only Lola is currently symptomatic but, given that they have been sharing bed, bath, and all their time together, Neve is certain also to be incubating a fine batch of varicella zosta.

It all started, classically, as a rash of spots concentrated on the torso and head. For a couple of days, we watched the rash grow and wondered vaguely about getting a doctor to identify it (Google being conspicuous by its absence). We weren’t too bothered, though, as Lola seemed otherwise fine: no malaise, no fever, and reporting no negative sensation from the spots.

Why it didn’t occur to us to think of chicken pox, I don’t know, but it was immediately obvious to the doctor we took her to on Saturday. She came out with a prescription for a bunch of Italian pharmacuticals: calpol, anti-histamine drops and an emollient anti-itch cream that has, apparently, superceded camomile lotion. We didn’t fulfil the script that day, as Lola was feeling so well — we thought we’d wait and see how it went. Whcih was a decision which looked pretty stupid at 1am when we were struggling to cope with a tormented Lola and a highly wakeful Neve.

Yes, the itching turned itself on with a vengeance, waking Lola a couple of hours after she’d gone to bed on Saturday night. She was yelling and crying and writhing about for hours while we impotently stayed with her, unable to offer much relief but able at least to distract with stories and songs. Of course, all the kerfuffle woke Neve, too, and, eventually, it was she who stayed awake the longest.
Continue reading A pox on both my girls!

Enough about my pseudo-erudite reading, I hear you cry: what about the children?

Right now, they are in Italy with Isa, where I’ll be joining them next week. All reports are good: Lola was in her own personal heaven yesterday when she went off with Zia Dedi to make ice-cream; Neve is pathologically happy these days and geographical dislocation hasn’t affected that. They are both sharing a bed at Nonna’s house, which Isa says they are really enjoying. Apparently, they are also managing to sleep. Eventually. When they’re tired of enjoying.

The other day, I went to play my guitar for Lola’s class. It was science week, and they were looking at the science of music. They all (both reception classes) sat on the floor around me and listened while I ran through some key guitar facts; then we all sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; then I sang GI Blues; and we finished off with a bit of the “you hum it, I’ll play it” style of ad hoc song accompaniment. It was really great fun. The kids were attentive, inquisitive, friendly and generally great fun to be around. It makes one quite envious of a primary school teacher’s job (financial aspect aside).

What else? Well, in general, Lola has been going through a bit of an emotional-knife-edge stage: everything is lovely while life proceeds as she would dictate but, the moment a hint of “no” appears she is thrown into a fit of wailing and grief that would befit a world-ending catastrophe. Of course, one cannot give up the saying of “No” but remaining calm and applying sensible measures in the face of such exaggerated responses is far from easy.

Neve’s problem inhabits the opposite pole: the word “No” means nothing to her; you may apply it as liberally as you like but she will continue to beat Lola about the head, or pour rice onto the floor, or thieve yummy yum-yums from the cupboard. It’s hard to know what to do; the current decision is that we remove her to a separate room (perhaps the bottom of the stairs), have a serious talk with her (until she stops laughing), and then leave her there, explaining why. She doesn’t stay, of course, and we couldn’t enforce that; but it does get the point through. We think.

I should point out that, though I’ve picked out a couple of negative points for both girls, the negative is not dominant: they are both wonderful, happy, loving girls who bring us a great deal of joy and pride.

Actually, it wasn’t so Victorian. And it scared the wits out of Dad, who thought she might have died.

It seems that on waking yesterday, Mum experienced a crushing pain in the chest and, on sitting up and swinging her legs out of bed, she fainted and was out for long enough to give Dad a bad scare.

She came round (“why is the light on?”), feeling woozy and wondering whether she should make an appointment to see the doctor. Dad called an ambulance, which arrived very quickly, and Mum went off to Musgrove Park; Dad followed later with clothes, etc.

I called Musgrove on the way to work this morning and they put me through to Mum. She sounded quite herself and said she felt like a hypocrite (I’m not sure I understand why). Apparently, it wasn’t a problem with her heart, as they found no tell-tale enzymes in her blood; they have no idea what it was. They’ll be doing a treadmill/ECG test later though they expect to find nothing of interest.

Mum sounded cheerful and unworried: looking forward to going home later. Let’s hope it was just a one-off. (Though, she did experience this pain two or three times during the week preceding this incident).