Laureva at Eight

I realized yesterday that I never wrote an overview post of Laureva at eight for her birthday, so I'm making up for that now.

She had her annual checkup this morning. Since June 3, 2021, she has grown 7cm (now 130.5) and gained 1.4 kilos (now 23). She has also been instructed by her pediatrician to eat more.

Laureva is a much more interested in food than her sister. She generally has a bigger appetite and will eat a wider variety of foods, though she absolutely hates pasta (except for spaghetti with meatballs and tomato sauce). She loves chocolate. For breakfast, she eats a plain soft cheese (petit suisse) with cocoa powder and cocoa crispies, and she often requests crêpes, which she likes to eat with chocolate hazelnut spread. She is not much for fish, but she'll devour pork, chicken and beef products. She often asks to taste new things from others' plates. 

Laureva has also developed a taste for reading. When the pediatrician asked her how she liked to spend her time, she answered, "reading." She's currently into The Dork Diaries and a French graphic novel series called Les Sisters. Sunday, I saw her reading the first volume of her sister's new Warrior Cats books.

Laureva also enjoys school, though she's not quite so gung-ho about it as Maëva. She seems to particularly enjoy anything that's project-oriented. This year, she got excited whenever she had to work with a partner to do a report, or a writing project, for example. She always wants to get started right away and talk to her partner about it for hours on the phone to get things ready. That bodes well for next year as she'll be a fourth grader in a combined third/fourth classroom and I think the teacher (she'll stay with the same teacher as this year, Mme Conny) is planning for the six fourth graders in the class to do a lot of project-based work. The most recent report she did at the end of the school year was on the lynx with her friend Apolline.

Laureva continues to be very intense, with a tendency towards quick, fiery reactions, as opposed to calm, poised ones. She started having frequent headaches a few years ago and we've been trying to figure out whether there's a physical problem provoking them, or whether she's making herself sick by screaming and crying. There seems to be a combination of both things going on. The search finally narrowed down to her eyesight. She's had glasses for about a year, which seems to help some. We got her color-change lenses this spring, so she wears her glasses nearly all the time, inside and out. However, she continues to have the occasional headache and we don't really know why, sometimes probably fatigue, other times perhaps intense emotional reactions.

She's become very precise and literal about things and will object if something is not executed exactly as planned. She continues to not like being told what to do, and she doesn't much like answering personal questions. On the other hand, she has a sense of humor and likes to clown around.

She has interests that converge with Maëva - Legos, Switch, piano, tennis, drama, swimming - and others that diverge. She's been learning to play boules with Sylvain and practicing both pointer and tirer techniques. She's getting pretty good. She also likes to run errands with me and help with everything she can, whether it be filling up a shopping basket, filling out forms, using keys to open mailbox and door, and paying with my ATM card. She still often asks to help out in the kitchen, as well. However, I decided to assign the girls the task of emptying the compost bucket. They both hate it. They go out armed. Maëva with a clothespin on her nose. Laureva with croquet mallets to bang on the side of the bin to scare critters away.

She does not like insects or spiders and freaks out on sight. Fair enough, I suppose, as she continues to get devoured by mosquitoes in summer months, in spite of two citronella anklets. She likes other animals, though, and is attentive to our six tortoises. She often spends ten to fifteen minutes distributing food, hibiscus treats, and making sure all are accounted for. She does not share her sister's fear of birds and is happy to come to Maëva's aid by shooing birds away for her.

Favorite color: purple. As for favorite animal, she says she doesn't really know. She likes a lot of different ones including foxes, squirrels and bunnies, I think.