It has been a busy few months in Lavinia’s life, so it’s probably time for one of these updates before I forget everything and suddenly she is in Year 2.
She finished Year 1 with lots of praise from her teachers. She is a great pupil, she learned loads and, most importantly, she still likes going to school. Maths is her favourite subject. History very much isn’t, although I’m not sure how strongly anyone can dislike history at six. Apparently, as far as she can tell quite strongly!
The main constructive feedback was that she needs to slow down and stop rushing her work, and we can absolutely confirm this! Lavinia has never been very good at pacing herself. If something should take five minutes, she will try to do it in two, so she can tackle the next thing. Sometimes speed and accuracy can coexist, but sometimes they absolutely do not. It’s something she still needs to work on at school and, to be fair, almost everywhere else. It’s a hard task to teach her but we’re on it 🙂
She also passed the Phonics Screening Check with 40 out of 40, meaning she did every single word correct. I know she is good at reading, but still: 40 out of 40! Incredible.
For the record, and unrelated with the school stuff, there are still no wobbly teeth. Nothing. Not even the slightest movement. All her teeth appear to be very happy where they are, and we’re happy we don’t need to live another small drama anytime soon!
Holidays abroad
Then we went to San Sebastián for our summer holiday, and she had a fantastic time. Her favourite thing, 100000%, was playing with the ocean waves. She would have stayed in the water indefinitely if we had allowed it.
She also enjoyed the food, a lot, and that’s also why we decided to go to the capital city of the Michelin-starred restaurants with her at such small age. I’d like to say she came home with a deep appreciation for Basque culture too, but the waves and the eating were the clear winners.
Handspringing into level 7
At gymnastics, she has almost completed Level 6. She still loves it, but she finds many of the basic exercises boring and would much rather skip straight to the impressive skills. Unfortunately for her, I continue to make her practise the boring ones!
She really wants to be invited to another squad trial, and I suspect those basics are exactly what she still needs to polish if she wants to compete outside her gym club. I’m not a coach, so I’m trying not to become one of those parents making technical corrections from the side based on three Instagram videos and a vague feeling. At the same time, wanting to do the harder skills and being ready to do them are not always the same thing.
This is difficult to explain to Lavinia. “The boring practice is often the useful practice” is not a particularly convincing argument when you are six. We have been worked out strategies to make the boring-basics exercise more engaging and less annoying to drill. We cracked some, and that helps her motivation: when she noticed how much she’s improved in a short span of time working on the boring basics, she is more prone to spend 10/15 minutes at home on them.
Quality summer time with Nonnis
After the holiday in Spain we had the grandparents visiting, in two back-to-back visits. Nonna Anna stayed with us for 12 days, followed almost immediately by Nonno Giannetto and Nonna Patrizia for 12 days too.
Living in another country means that time with grandparents has to be planned. We don’t get casual Sunday lunches or quick afternoon visits, so having them here for long enough to become part of our normal days is a real privilege.
The two visits were different, but both involved plenty of crochet, crosswords, football, playgrounds and time together.
Lavinia got to learn from them, play with them, annoy them and be spoiled by them, as is correct and traditional.
Mighty Year 2, here we go
And then, in blink of an eye, it was time to go back to school. She started Year 2 five centimetres taller than she was last September. Five centimetres! I know children are supposed to grow, but seeing the actual number makes it feel slightly unreasonable.
Year 2 has already brought a few friendship hiccups and some difficult situations to navigate. Nothing too serious, but at six she has very little experience to draw on. We tell her she is “new” here on Planet Earth, and she has everything to learn, so things that look small to us can feel enormous to her because she hasn’t encountered them before and doesn’t yet know what to do with them.
We’re glad she feels able to talk to us. She tells us what happened, asks for advice and lets us help her think about what she could say or do next time. We obviously can’t manage her friendships for her, but we can remind her that she is allowed to speak up, ask an adult for help and expect other people to treat her properly.
I’m sure all of this will get much easier as she gets older. (Yes, I know, let me enjoy my delusion).
We are football
Most recently, she went to a football stadium for the first time to watch Reading FC against Notts County.
Franz was eight when he went to his first match in Bari, so it felt special that Lavinia’s first one was in Reading, the town where she was born. Whether she grows up caring about Reading, Bari, both or neither is entirely up to her. For now, she has officially experienced live football. This was probably more meaningful from us parents than for her, but we still hope we’re passing her the message that it’s important to have hobbies and passions, and care about them.
And still, no wobbly teeth.
