Lavinia’s growing nicely and happy. While she didn’t nail any significant achievement this month, she had to deal with night terrors.

This month’s developments

The major milestone to flag this month is related to non-verbal communication. Lavinia expresses herself pretty well by vocalising in a certain way when she needs something, or when she’s upset.

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Facial expressions aside, though, she’d never used other forms of non-verbal communication, until a couple of days ago.
Out of the blue, while sitting on the highchair, she started clapping her hands. I was fast enough to shoot a video right away.

I am not surprised that Lavinia’s first mimic expression is hands-clapping. Her grandparents prompt her to do batti-manine every time we Facetime them. I read around that the first babies’ non-verbal gesture usually is waving goodbye. However, we’re always at home and don’t meet anyone because of the pandemic; it goes without saying that this would be impossible for Lavinia to learn.

We also celebrated Father’s day; we celebrate that every day as we’re so lucky to have Franz in our lives, but it was good to have a whole day entirely dedicated to him and his role in Lavinia’s life.
The society is cruel with parents: when a baby is born, the mother completely loses her identity as a human being, while the father is rarely considered at all. Things are changing – though till too slowly.

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We went for some long walks again, and as always we spent many many hours on the floor and on the sofa reading, singing, playing, and Facetime-ing family and friends.

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More food!

Lavinia is such a greedy baby. She likes food, and it’s never enough for her. Even when we think she’s full, yet she still has some room for another scoop of whatever we offer to her.

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I was concerned to give her eggs because it’s a high allergenic food; however, she devoured it with no problems at all.

There are only a small number of food that she hasn’t tried yet; 90% of them are food I’m deadly allergic to, such as shellfish and nuts—the NHS advice to avoid this food until she turns 2 or 3. We’re fine to wait until that age since this is something she can live without also in terms of micronutrients.

Night Terrors

Lavinia has started to experience night terrors from time to time.
Night terrors are part of babies’ cognitive development, though they’re such a pain for parents to see.

You know your baby is having a night terror when they start crying desperately in their sleep. They usually don’t wake up, and if that happens, they are generally able to soothe themselves and go back to sleep.

Whether you like it or not, this is ugly and painful. I can hear Lavinia crying and see her moving relentlessly in her cot, as she’s almost in pain. I know I cannot do anything for her, and that hurts. Most of all, it’s crucial not to wake the baby at this stage, and that hurts a little too because my instinct pushes me to comfort her.

The name itself is awful too: night terrors. I mean, I am not sure how dreadful it may sound for a native English speaker, but for an Italian it seems like the worst thing that can ever happen to an asleep person.

This month’s videos selection

I know you’re looking forward to more videos, so there they are!

In the next episode

We hope our childminder will open soon, now that the 2 metres distance rules have been lifted and the general social restrictions are more relaxed.

We expect Lavinia will start crawling consistently next month, so we’re enjoying these last few weeks of relative calm here. The tornado is going to be upgraded into a hurricane!