Monday 20 July 2009

Things We Can Do Now...

Since my last post Antonia has learnt to ride her bike without training wheels. It's amazing how far a little bribery will go! She learnt and her reward was a Transformer named Bumblebee....yes, she has an older brother! Currently she is obsessed with his old Transformers, of which he has many!

Her counting and adding abilities are really good considering she has only really done stuff at home with me. School, such as it is here at this age, has just started teaching her a few common words to write, like Mamma, Babbo, Sole etc. which she really enjoys doing. My task is to get her reading in English. We are finding her remembering the patterns that go with the names of the alphabet the biggest challenge - it is coming but slowly!

She got roller blades for her birthday, although not fast she can now get up without help and is slowly moving further and faster. Next I would like her swimming but that is more of a challenge without transport here - I was going to get a seat for my bike but when I looked at it it is way too low and she is too big!! My excuse anyway.

On Saturday she had a nasty fall in the Cascine. She looks like she has been in a car accident. She fell and nearly righted herself twice before completely going onto her face! Her nose took most of the impact, luckily it isn't broken, but then I think it is almost impossible to break at this age, but she did take a chunk out of the bridge and severely scrape the rest and below her lip, as well as biting her top lip - no pictures of this one! I have taken some but mainly so I can see how she is improving! We doused her in water thoroughly and disinfectant from one of the snack stands and then got in a taxi home. There we put here in a bath with the shower running - now I am applying Streptosil to try to reduce the scarring. There was no skin to stitch and we got all the grit out, so as she was hysterical at the thought of going to the hospital we didn't. Having gone through a few of these falls with Alex I know that all the hospital does is keep you sitting around for too long and then sends you off with instructions to do exactly what we did, so I have no concerns about not going, I have to be honest! Anyway, hopefully all will be well and she will be okay!