MN Little Italy 10

[francagoestohollywood]

Welcome, ciao, hello

lots of not sleeping children, i see.

very grim the weather in london, luckily i have the baby for pure comfort. and radio 4.

i agree that 5 upwards is hard, i would talk to him as much as possible about how much you care for him ,about his future as a grown up man, so he does not feel scared. tell him that you had problems sleeping when you were little, and that slowly you overcame with lots of love, blahh, blahh. when i say you, i always mean dh too, of course. i think 830 is the right time for a 6 year old, but he may need less sleep.

in what way are you controlling? food for thought, wonder if i am controlling in some way with ds

bucharest are you in a small village or town?

DD was awake at 5am as well, so ended up in our bed trying to get my top off... she's gone back to being a milk vampire...

poor DD2, PIppi, but really of your supersize king, our tiny double in NOT enough for our 5 mo!! and never mind when the 4yo joins us...

it's horrible here, it's been rainig so all the iced snow is even more slippery and getting to school is a nightmare, can't use the pushchair as it gets stuck, so have to drag poor DS who's constantly slipping even in his wellies, and trying to see where I'm putting my feet withDD in the sling and holding big ikea umbrella... obviously no pavement has been cleared around here! and still waiting for all my nappy parcels, really suspecting the postman has done a runner with them as he hasn;t been here since last week

i find it so hard to cut down on mumsnet!!!!! managed one evening only!

no postman here either, and rubbish has not been collected.

anyone following the rachel cusk book on radio 4?

dd was up at 6, so not too bad, collapsed again thankfully after milk, phew.

oh, and I had very young modern maestra (possibly on her first job), then became temporary head (surely to the surprise of the old glasses-on-chain scary maestre). she is lovely and very good too

franca must have gone to the gym..

HH- I'm in a town with a village mentality- 60,000 people, 3 times bigger than my town in the UK, but it feels like I'm in the 1950s.....(which has its good points too....but y'know....) My town is also specifically criticised by similar sized towns around it......has a reputation for blinkers I think....

what's blinkers?

my town in italy is big and still seems to be in the 1800 at times !

sunflower here is the same. it's all sloshy everywhere - pavements a muddy mess and forgot to put dd1 in wellies eventhough I did! bad mum.

I do not think I am controlling at all actually. not yet at least. but I can be as childish as they come and is not fair (although I've improved loads since she was born). smtimes my dd looks wiser and more mature than me and puts me to shame!

i know a bit mesagne, vey beautiful..

what?

mesagne is in the south too, a village.

isn't blinkers paraocchi?

potato and parsnip for the baby now, yum, yum.

ah gia'! [dumb emoticon]

How cultured of you hot to listen to radio4 first thing in the morning. all I can master is absolute radio for the music of my youth....

what a disappointment... postman has finally arrived with just mail for previous owners (been here 6 years ) and no parcels!!

this baby here is on plastic, no, sorry, she's just chewing her bib now... and now looking at me with her "pick me up" eyes, but just want to drink my caffe' d'orzo... need to go shopping too, but too scared to drive in these roads....

and my village is really small, 3100 people, and can be so backwards too, like telling my mum they can't understand how she can still speak to my xSIL , just because her and my DB have separated

Hellooo. Meant to join in last night but fell asleep in a dribbling heap on the settee. What a lot's been going on, a new thread already!.

Franca, sympathies for your DS's sleep situation, DD's being a pain too. I second whoever said books and a mini reading light(like the ones you can cip on books), especially as he can now read, no? Maybe get him something a little more exciting than what they get at school, to give him and incentive to read it. Tell him that's the way to become a fully-fledged librocubicologist (sp?) when he grows up. I personally wouldn't go for the CD/IPod option but then I dislike electronic equipment in bedrooms full stop. Don't whatever you do get him a laptop and get him hooked on kidsnet. He'll never sleep again!

I'm really disappointed at the solution reached wrt the IREM situation. FFS, the Brits populate vast swathes of the working community abroad yet aren't prepared to accept the same on their soil. Ignorant sods. Let's hope none of them decide to try their luck trying to find a job abroad (à la Auf Wiedersehen Pet, does anyone remember that or am I the only oldie here?).

Pippi, if you want suggestions for other books/writers from other countries, have you tried Wild Swans, by Jung Chang? Similarly I read a book of Chinese short stories (called the Book of Chinese short Stories I think) that was really good. Eastern European I can only think of Milan Kundera, read loads of his stuff when I was younger but like Hot I don't think I could read it now. Russian authors i know loads, but mostly classic stuff. I would recommend anythng by Chekov, but only at the theatre, I've always found reading plays to be quite dire. Lermontov's a Hero of Our Time is a good read, or at least out of all the ones I studied at A level it was by far my favourite. Anna Karenina is quite good too, especially of you read it together with Madame Bovary (Flaubert) and Effie Briest (Fontane).
South American all I can recommend is Isabel allende, but in small doses. There is also Gabriel Garcia Marquez (eg. Love in the Time of Cholera) but personally I found it too depressing. there's a kind of malaise permeating S. American lit which reflects the political/cultural malaise in S. America itself. Having said that I haven't read a wide range of authors so there could be lots more exciting stuff out there.

that's tiny, Sun!

i have my 2 hours of freedom whilst dd naps, should clean but iwll read instead, and switch off the net!

No, I wasn't at the gym , I was at work!

I'm feeling a bit better (less guilty) this morning.

Bucharest, your little town sounds claustrophobic. At least you are blessed with Scamy's visits ... sorry, I suppose it's not enough, is it?
Ds's teachers are all quite young, and his maestra dell'area linguistica seems very nice and understanding (though very keen on "ordine", which of course is not ds's best talent!). I also like a lot the TA (which is maestra di sostegno here) who always looks smiley, and help them a lot. SDadly, I'm not sure what'll happen next year with the bloody riforma gelmini. Dd's scuola materna is on strike tomorrow, because nursery schools will be reformed too, with a maestra unica. Which would be funny if it wasn't tragic. I mean, can you believe: one teacher with 20 3/4/5 yrs old?

I've had some terrible teachers through my career, but also some fantastic ones. My professoressa of Italian lit and latin used to shake her head violently whenever someone said a cavolata... and she would lit up a cigarette ! But she knew by heart the plot of any piece teatrale, so we forgave her.

but I thought the riforma had become su richiesta! Have I missed something? Are parents actually requesting the maestra unica?

Pippi, will you stop talking of cutting down? ... you so don't want to

heheheheheh NO, Brangelina. It is su richiesta, but they have cancelled the compresenze for instance (which is bad) and some schools still don't know which orari they can offer!

And the maestra unica for the materne means they want just one teachers for the morning to be replaced y another one at 2 o'clock. This means, obviously, that materne would become just a parking for our children instead of a very good progetto educativo.

Blimey.

We were discussing this last night- and apart from scaryteacher retiring no-one seems to know what's happening re unica or otherwise....one of the mums seemed to think the elementare we're going to will have 2 teachers per modulo instead of 3....I'm just completely bemused....

Dd's materna is private, but with a maestra unica...and 23 kids this year from age 2-6. But she's a superwoman and I reckon could handle the other 2 classes as well singlehandedly......I don't know about the statale down here....

possibly yes. But I'm very pissed off that they are destroying our state school system. Which is by no means perfect, but has to be defended, imho, of course

Wow, I'm impressed. Actually, last year the dc went to a private one (no place in the state/comunali ones) and there was one teacher per age group.
Dd's at scuola materna comunale. In her classroom there are 21-23 (can't remember!) children (3sh, 4sh,5-6) with 2 teachers and also a TA (shared by more classes). I'm pretty impressed by the amount/variety/quality of activities they do, and by how laid back/relaxed the children are. I'm aware that not all nursery schools are this good (this particular nursery school is doing very well because it's had the same teachers/dirigenti for quite a few yrs with similar pedagogic views), but surely the maestra unica (and cutting money) is not the solution

I agree that many parents simply don't know what we'll happen. Even I - and I try to keep informed - am clueless! There was a meeting on monday at ds's school, but I couldn't attend.