Category: journal

A catch-all for the day-to-day meanderings of these parents-to-be

happay-doo

What a lovely chatty girl Neve is. “Happy Doo”, as she kept singing on her birthday. Complete with candle-extinguishing puff after the last line.

Other stuff that Neve says:

“ciao-ciao my daddy”

“no sit heeya daddy”

“daddy bear [beard] – yeeesss
Mummy beer – noooo
Lola beer – noooo
Me beer – nooo”

(many variations of the above)

“tedaaa!” (ie tadah!) – said when almost anything is accomplished or revealed, with accompanying open-armed flourish

“Shuuz daddy, on”

“up! daddy. up!” — telling me to get up (probably to giver her a snack

Daddy jump!

Nani! Nani here! [tapping pocket]

Mention the word aeroplane and she’ll stick her arms out and make engine noises.

Mummy na-na ba-BO! [if she sees Isa lying down. Also said of Lola, Daddy, whoever]

She gets excited when she sees Tony from next door. “Look: Tony! Tony!”

She’ll wave goodbye and shout, “ciao ciao!” to anyone who comes to (well, leaves from) the door.

She’s potty-trained now — has been since Good Friday, though the excremental aspect took longer to stabilise than the widdling, which was sorted by day two. She took the whole thing very seriously and got very upset when needing a poo. Not sure if that’s because she was more aware of the feeling and freaked out by it, or that she was frustrated trying to control the mechanics of it. Anyway, she has it now: “Papa’: cacca!” she said to me the other day. So I put her on the loo and she did a poo. Hurrah!

She loves jumping on the trampoline and is very good at it. A natural. She loves playing with her cuddly toys and especially, at the moment, the washable, vanilla-scented baby (“be’be'”), taking it everywhere, putting it to bed. She loves to eat (“yum-yums”, “‘nack!”, “wova!” [uova], “dabta!” [pasta, her favourite]) and gets very excited to see things cooking; loves to help Isa prepare stuff.

Land ahoy!

About to cut the railings Well, soil at least. Inching past in a succession of barrows under the purported guidance of an increasingly stooped man. Yes, it’s the obligatory decking project — well, what else would you do with a sweltering bank holiday weekend?

...done We’re replacing the two walled flower beds outside the back of the house with a deck, and I’ve been barrowing the too-good-to-waste soil round to the allotment. Ouch. Actually, I started the week before the bank holiday — I bought an angle grinder and cut down the railings, then started removing some of the brickwork. Over Easter, I got pretty much all of the earth moved; with luck, this coming 4-day weekend will see me getting the foundings level and the frame started. There’s a bit of concreting to do, too — something else I’ve never done before.

Soil toilTony and Peter have been helping. Peter came round with a large percussive/rotary drill which drilled into concrete as if it were butter and got out one of the railing supports which was deeply concreted in. And Tony has been pondering ways to approach the construction and offering advice, much of which, if taken, would extend the job by some months, though it is generally good advice.

Ready to level. Of course, just doing the decking would have been too simple and relaxing, so we decided to use the same weekend to potty-train Neve. After all, there’s nothing better able to take your mind off the unstoppable momentum of a few hundredweight of soil than a hysterical almost-two-year-old running around clutching her bum and shouting “cacca!”

‘Warda, Papa: jarmas!

Says Neve, pointing at her pyjamas. And then, “Lola – jarmas,” pointing at Lola’s. She’s starting to string sentences together, often in a mix of english and italian. She might ask for help opening a cupboard (hol, papa – apri), or grab your finger and pull you to the bottom of the stairs to tell you that “mama up heeya!” Some sound she has yet to master. “c”, for example. If you take her out to common to witness the bovine phenomenon, she’ll point excitedly and shout, “warda!  Hhow!”

sprung

P1070614 Spring has, I mean. When I arrived in Italy, the cherry trees were bare; now they are full of blossom. The days have gone properly hot and you can sit outside in a t-shirt and be too hot. Hurrah.

I have a new pair of glasses, courtesy of Grazia who got me the eye-test and then the lenses and frames and, as usual refused any payment. She also gave Isa a pair of Galliano sunglasses and Lola a pair of funky pink ones. I did manage to pay for Cesarina’s new lenses (100 euros), but it’s not much of a victory.

In other news, Isa went out with Elena one night for a drink and a chat in Treviso; and she’s off out tonight with Susi and Grazia. Sunday, we’re off to the Grazia’s for lunch. Saturday we’re having hare for lunch, or dinner. Tuesday, we’re having Lola’s faux birthday party, as per her request, at which event we’ll cook Nonna’s goose. But only in the literal sense.Lola

I bought a new DVD player for Dedi, to stop us going completely mad trying to get the old one to work. It has the added bonus of allowing you to plug in a USB stick and play video, music, pics. I may watch Young Frankenstein on it later.

I also turned the wireless network on on Giada’s router so now I can get proper InterWeb at Cesarina’s house. It reaches all the way to the kitchen, though the signal is a little weak (would be better if the router were in Morena’s front room). Had to move from WEP to WPA-PSK to be able to connect Dedi’s laptop, too, but that was a fairly minor bit of fiddling. I always thought a wireless net would be fine between the two houses; years ago they said they’d tried it and it didn’t work; perhaps it was some other aspect (than the signal reception) that was the problem.

P1070712 What else? They’ve turned the fields next to Claudio into a Prosecco vineyard (except, it can’t really be Prosecco ‘cos we’re not in the right region). All owned by the guy down the road I once did some translation for.

Neve is just totally adorable. Lola is pretty adorable, too, but is getting a little spoilt and we’re probably being a bit too soft. Quindi: caprici.

There’s more… but it is failing to come to mind. That’ll be the wine, of which, of course, I am drinking a fair bit: I have my reputation to live up to, after all.

gunka-gunka

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.Neve

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.

on yer bike

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.

A pox on both my girls!

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.early stage

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.
ouchy
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!