We are staycationing again at the Tysons Sheraton, the kids are asleep, which gives us time to write on a weekend. It is almost as if we are always in recovery mode, catching up on sleep, trying to get healthy, recovering from stress, work, anxiety and exhaustion. Albert has been working on “disdain” lately: remembering that everyone has their own story and concerns and trying not to judge so quickly, nor so harshly. After all with all the work, anxiety, exhaustion, and stress, why add anger and frustration to the mix.
We recently read that searching for meaning is more important than searching for happiness and though some people would disagree, parenting holds a lot of meaning for us. In twenty years we will have to rediscover individual meaning, but it is such a short period of time that you have your kids that we happily accept these moments and this meaning.
Curie has been learning to read, and it has been remarkable as she does. With sight words, she largely memorizes right now, not yet sounding her words out, but she is moving along and her teacher guides the students well on their individual paths. Reading has become a bigger part of our lives too with Curie bringing three books a day from school to read at night, a library book, a comprehension book, and a sight reading book. Elia has wanted to read her books too, leading to all of us reading in bed before sleep. It is a nice regular thing we do now.
With our Ottawa trip for Erin’s conference, the kids were great and we had a good time hanging out with the cousins and at the hotel. Amazingly there was snow on the way up to Canada. We stopped in Syracuse on the way up and down. The kids love hotpot and we had a chance to have all you can eat Little Sheep Hotpot in the newly remodeled Ottawa location. On our return, we found out that ours will start all you can eat on Tuesdays. Curie loves fish cake and we ordered a lot of it and introduced it to Livi and Emi. The kids also loved to drive the cousins’ powered car with our finding out that neither Elia nor Curie can steer straight yet. Another thing to happily work on.
As mentioned in Elia’s blog, both kids were so well behaved and we rewarded them with a present. They wanted Belle dolls (Albert and the girls saw the movie with Taylor and the cousins again) at first but after a trip to Walmart, Curie wanted a Wonder Woman movie doll. When it came time to buy them, Curie chose Wonder Woman’s mother and her horse, likely because she looks like She-ra, which Curie has been watching, and Elia chose her yellow Belle dress.
Our crawfish day was fantastic with both kids fearless and Curie, a crawfish connoisseur, learning how to shell her own crawfish, though at some point because she is just beginning resorted to asking us to peel them for her. Elia was hesitant, but both kids love crawfish now.
Curie continues to mature and will behave simply to be in contrast to Elia when Elia is frustrated. She works on getting her emotions under control and we talk about how big her problem is, and remind her, not that she is the big sister, but that she is Elia’s protector and is Elia’s hero, which works a lot better.
She is a five year old and when we play she tells us what to pretend. “Pretend you are Shining Armor, and pretend you say you are hungry,” or something like that. She determines how you will play rather than just playing. But she needs time with us, some part wanting single parent time, some part reacting to attention to Elia, but quality time for each child has become important. Curie still makes it a point to take care of Elia, giving her toys when she is not tired and remembers to “be beautiful,” but she is particular about whether or not it is fair. Curie is tired a lot, not eating enough, not eating enough of the right things, and with no nap and martial arts after school, she is tired each morning.
She is still a five year old; when we went to the turf at National Harbor, she made it a point to dance all around the space. She is drawn to little children and loves to hold their hands and dance and wants to take care of them. When we went to Pinstripes for Easter, she loved to play bocce and spend time, but when a baby came by she would cock her head and say “aww.” She still loves to pretend to tap dance and will tell us how to do it. We love all spontaneously tapping in elevators. Something we forget to write about. When she eats she loves to ask us to feel her tummy to see if she is full. We tell her if she can still fit more and she will eat a bit more. She does take small bites though.
Curie loves best to wake up with both parents in bed, she still loves to be in the middle of both of us which is a challenge with four of us and Elia also wants to be in the middle. But you can see Curie’s pleasure when she wakes next to us or has time to be with us either alone or both of us. Curie grinds her teeth when she sleeps, and we have found that when Albert gets back into bed with them that she stops grinding, leading us to suspect that she find comfort that we are next to her even as she sleeps.