Category: Curie Months

These days, we’ve been running up against each new curve ball we’re thrown as if they are some sort of conspiracy instead of just embracing that challenges are simply a part of life. Having more than one anchor is critical as we grow older; when things don’t go well at work, knowing your kids and your spouse still love you can be a revelation.

Curie has been maturing a lot recently; we don’t mean she is mature yet, rather she is learning to control her emotions more. Whether it is having a reward to work for, determining whether it is a small problem or big problem, or, more recently, behaving because Elia is not behaving (it is funny and interesting to watch – “I am behaving, right?” Curie is getting her feelings under control more and more – let’s say 60% of the time right now.

Cure is also working on giving and sharing with Elia. Albert told his mom this and was surprised to hear her tell him not to let her concede all the way – perhaps something that happened when he and his brother and sister were kids. Curie is very aware of our treatment of Elia and how we encourage her. There is a sense of unfairness she feels and wants attention and time with both of us; she actually gets more attention because of it, but she doesn’t feel like she does. Elia has been tellling Albert that he is “her Beast” in reference to Beauty and the Beast, but it comes across like claiming posession to Elia especially as Elia acts up at bed time and Albert has to take her to a different room. Elia gets calmed and Curie sees it as Albert and Elia having quality time.

We have been to many birthday parties lately and recently while attending a birthday party for a friend from pre-school, another guest and former playmate came up and said “Hi Curie! I’m XXXX, remember me?” Curie’s response was “I don’t remember you.” Candor at that age is pretty brutal. “Daddy, you have a big tummy,” or “you have a big butt!” Part candor part getting a rise out of us. We know we have to work on it with her, but it is pretty funny sometimes.

We’ve been working on schoolwork as well. Both of us need to be better at afterschool lessons with her. She doesn’t have homework per se yet but we need to build the habit. Curie loves lessons with us, it gives her one-on-one time and affirmation. Projects she has had to do at home recently include making a poster for being the class VIP for a week where she listed ten things she loves (family, Wonder Woman, the beach, bunnies, cats, rainbow ponies, ramen, Robin, and snow). We let her draw and write and printed pictures she wanted; as much as we wanted to help, letting her make her own was wonderful to see. She is so proud of it. We are too, we even framed it. Part of being the class VIP was to take care of Curly, a teddy bear in a backpack with clothes and books. The assignment was to do something with Curly and log it in his journal, like Flat Stanley. We went on a walk in the woods with the kids’ bikes and took a picture for his journal.

Curie tested for her white belt with stripe at “martial arts (tae kwon do).” It was amazing to see how much she has improved; her kicks are on, her push-ups are adorable (15 of them!), and her sparring was great. She is the smallest and youngest at the school (and at her actual school) we went in and saw the small kids and looked again to see Curie standing behind the small kid looking smaller. Erin’s family came to watch and she was so proud when she passed. Elia loves going to see Curie at martial arts and really wants to be a Tiger Tot when she is four. Curie loves martial arts so much that she did not want to take swim lessons because she thought it might make her miss martial arts (it wouldn’t, we have to sign her up still).

Curie is still sensitive. The day we went to the birthday party, we had met up with Natalie and Chloe at Michaels to paint bird houses. She loves hanging with the two of them and did not want to go to the birthday party. When we did go, she cried the whole way because she was missing lunch with them. She was also very good about not playing favorites when Natalie and Isabella, friends from preschool and kindergarten came on the same day for a play date (both of their mothers were/are pregnant and we wanted to give them a break). And the other night when we were worried about our taxes (all is fine), she saw that Erin was unhappy and told her that she wanted to take away all the sadness. We reminded her of the lesson in Inside Out where sadness is important to appreciate happiness. It reminded Albert of when he was in third grade and he asked God to take away Bernard’s bad grades and give them to him after Bernard got a D in first grade (Bernard has of course done great, and Albert has done fine too). To end on a lighter note, and speaking of Inside Out, Curie loves to do the Riley mooning and slapping her butt recently. It cracks her up. We are in Ottawa, hence the longer post. More next month.

One of Albert’s oldest and closest friends just told him that he has been in the hospital for nearly a month and had almost died. He is fine now and will be discharged soon (his wife only now let him have his phone). His advice to Albert, and indeed to all of us is to appreciate what we have and that he was glad to see us and the girls this past December. We take his words to heart and cherish our families and our children.

Curie started kindergarten less prepared than we would have liked; her pre-school, the one we just moved out of did not give her everything she needed, and as the youngest child in the class, she did not have as much time as others to get ready. That all being said, she started the year at 103 out of 193 on her diagnostic test and six months later is at 163 out of 193, a great improvement celebrated not only by us, but by her teacher as well. We have finally bought her workbooks and are working to help her in school (though carving out time is proving harder than we thought). She loves to write in the numbers on our receipts for tips and loves to read books with us each night (she is also proving to be a good role model for Elia who wants to learn).

She finally outgrew the forward facing seat and has transitioned into a new booster seat (Elia wants one too), got a new backpack (hers was 12 liters and the teacher asked us to get a new one, now 18 liters – Albert got it from REI and did not get a character backpack), and a new water bottle after we found out that we had not been cleaning the straw and bite valve as well as we should have.  She loves having a wallet and money to buy snacks at martial arts.

Curie’s favorite shows are DC Superhero Girls (though she calls it Disney Superhero Girls), Sarah and Duck, and Moana clips on YouTube (“Eggs”). She and Elia sing the songs from Moana every day and likes when Albert spoofs them with “I am sitting at the edge with my daughter, because I am her father,” and “Awake awake, you have to be awake.” Albert bought the girls a 70% off Moana boat that pops up and the girls can play in it. It has been tremendous for the two of them, though Curie insists on being Moana, and Elia tells us she is the pig. The Moana clips even surpassed her “Egg” viewing and Sarah and Duck.

We documented the girl’s lesson in gift giving recently and are planning to do more. In martial arts, the students can earn tips for their belts, colored tape on the ends of their belts, for various things; Curie has an orange tip and is earning a red tip for her form. But one tip we want to get for her is the yellow tip, that a parent can do when a student does something great at home, and we feel that this may be the thing for which to award her.

Curie has been wearing long fancy dresses at school (Elia too), had her hair cut again (her hair is getting fuller), letting Albert brush her hair each day, and generally being a great kid that whines sometimes, but only when she is hungry or tired. We got a photo album for her pictures and she immediately took to arranging them. It is interesting how the physical picture is so precious. Her friends Navi and Natalie both took pictures home with them as souvenirs. We have been going to Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot a lot recently where Curie has liked both chicken and meat, and recently started to eat the meat in Pho rather than just meatballs. Her favorite is Chuy’s mac and cheese, though she loves to help cook, and recently did almost all the prep work except for cutting the meat for beef noodle soup. She is quick to use the kitchen scissors and now uses a sharp knife blunt nose tip knife for her cooking (under supervision of course).

These days, as rough and eventful as they might be for us at work and in the world, are still enormously special times for us where the kids love unconditionally, and play time is paramount in a child’s mind. Curie looks for more time with both of us, with her writing at school that she aspires to spend more time with momma. Besides playing school, and mommy and baby, and doctor, magic and queens, we spend time in bed pretending to be things. The other day playing with Elia and Erin, Curie said that she was queen of the pandas and that Elia was the baby panda, Albert was the daddy panda and Erin was the Mommy panda named Herrera. At least she didn’t call Erin the grandmother like Elia did.

It has been a roller coaster of a month, Curie really wanted the girl to win the election and was very saddened when she didn’t; we had to work hard on not letting the kids be to affected by our own affect.

Being in kindergarten has unlocked amazing growth in Curie, her drawings have gotten much better and she is reading and identifying things every day. She loves to play school and is always Mrs. Best when she plays. We learned a lot at her parent-teacher conference: Curie loves school and when she was the teacher of the day, she had no hesitation in teaching the kids. . Her baseline test shows that she has a lot to work on, but she is not the bottom of the class even though she is the youngest. Her work is progressing nicely: as reported as a spoiler in the last blog, in one of the early assessments she had gotten a zero out of ten for her color words. Albert used test prep techniques to teach her and her result was ten out of ten, leading us to believe that she may not have had as much time as other kids, she is definitely in the right place.

At the parent-teacher conference, both of us had to be there so we asked Julie to look after the kids. When we returned, we expected to have both kids happy to see us and run to us, but Julie had them both asleep without too much issue. It was amazing. Albert was a little sad, but we got to watch Central Intelligence (which did not live up to its potential) as well.

Curie loves martial arts and works hard on the lessons and her forms she is doing a form that Albert keeps calling the “Ban Ki Moon Part 1” form though it is actually something else. She is ravenous after martial arts and we have to get her food as fast as we can; we think it is because she does not have time to finish her lunch. She did start buying snacks at martial arts which she was so proud of doing. It was wonderful to see. She and Etta are best friends and when Etta was going to test for her white belt, Curie insisted on staying to watch and support her. The teachers and Etta’s dad were impressed; we were very proud. The kids get a yellow tip on their belt if they do something good at home, Curie is still whiney at home but she is working towrd her yellow tip. We have to submit a yellow card for her to get her yellow tip and her wanting to watch Etta’s whitebelt test (a whole hour) was pretty impressive.

Curie loves to garden and loves to come out and use her cutters (garden shears) and trim the bushes. We raked and took care of the front and back yard with both girls helping. The squirrels ate our pumpkins carving a hole in the pumpkin to eat the seeds. Curie has been learning about squirrels at school and told us that they are crazy like Mrs. Best, who apparently says she is crazy (and forgetful) like a squirrel.

Curie is so excited about the holidays and listed Thanksgiving, Elia’s birthday, Albert’s birthday, Christmas (missed New Year’s), and Erin’s birthday to celebrate. We have been going to hotels to swim, but recently she did not want to, instead wanting swimming lessons. We believe it is too cold for her and that she wants to be good in the pool. We are looking into doing swimming lessons with her friends in a heated school nearby.

She is a great kid but still kid. she wants whatever toy that Elia is playing with, gets fussy and scared at things she should be fussy or scared at, wants things at Target (both kids love Target), and is pickier in eating than before. But she still wants time with Mommy, is crazy funny and laughs at funny things “Mommy, its the police, act normal!” She is crazy caring about Elia, playing mommy and baby with her. It is a crazy world right now, but we have to balance keeping it real to giving them a safe and fun place to be. We were recently witnesses to an attempted shoplifting and Curie was pretty scared about it. We used it to teach her the importance of being good and the example of Albert remembering their license plate and reporting it to the store was used to teach her the importance of doing the right thing even if you are scared. They may not remember it ever happened but if we can keep reinforcing that character counts, being brave is doing the right thing in the face of danger, and that you have to take responsibility for your actions, then a glimpse into the more frustrating parts of our world is okay.

We went to a lot of farms in October, we went apple picking in Stribling, the Burke Fall Festival with Natalie, Chloe, and a whole Bright Horizon’s contingent, Butler Farms with Lucy and Nora, and Navi, and Great Country Farms (our favorite) by ourselves. The girls love the farms and fall festivals, Curie particularly likes the jump “pillow” a giant jumping bounce set-up at Great Country Farms.

In addition there were a number of birthday parties, Katie’s at the bounce place in Woodbridge, where we immediately ran out of batteries in our brand new car, EJ’s party at a different bounce place, and Etta’s party (which we had to miss Mateo’s party because it was on the same day) at Flight, basically ANOTHER bounce place!

We bought the new car, and Curie was really broken up about saying goodbye to the old yellow car (of course we haven’t gotten rid of it yet) we had the girls take a picture with the old car and she was beside herself. Elia will point to the old car, but Curie really has a bond with it. All the kids at Bright Horizons knew when we were there with the Yellow Bug. Both girls hugged the car, and it wasn’t until we went into the new car that she felt better. We asked her what the name of the new car is, and she said “Pug” because it rhymes like “Bug.” It has not stuck, but it was very cute, the “Yellow Pug.” A few days later, Erin dropped a bottle of white pepper onto our scale and it shattered like a car window, pretty amazing really. Curie’s response was “now I will miss the scale AND the car.”

Curie loves school, she loves going, gets scared if she thinks we might miss the bus. She has had some catching up to do because she is the youngest of the class, we now encourage Super Why and Sesame Street over “eggs” and spend a lot of time with Daddy and Mommy to do lessons. She actually insists on lessons most days. She had a zero on her color words when they began assessing and Albert worked on it with her using test prep techniques (how many “P” words are there? Which one is the longer one? There are three B words, there is only one O word), and spoiler alert for November’s blog: she got 100% on her latest assessment. It shows that she can learn and catch up quickly, and is learning and progressing at an amazing pace. Her drawings have improved dramatically drawing with her friends, and when we go back to Bright Horizons on occasion to pick up Elia, there is a difference between her and her friends in the K-prep class.

Curie takes the bus every morning and takes the martial arts bus to tae kwon do (which we just call “martial arts”) for after-school care. On the bus to school we wave to her from the side and try to see her in the windows (they are tinted on the buses here – which is different from when we were kids). The thing though is that unless she is sitting on our side and really up to the window, it is hard to see her. We asked her if she was sitting on our side on the bus and she said that the bus patrol tells her where to sit. So the next day, unprompted, while getting on the bus, Curie stops the line cold on the stairs (she is the first one on the bus normally). We wait, and wait, and wonder what is going on, then we hear the bus driver call to us and say “she asked if she could sit on the side where her parents are so that she can wave to you.” That’s our girl! Stand up for what you want! We were so proud.

So, Curie comes home and tells us she is going to test for her white belt (Albert said that he got his white belt when they gave him his uniform, but apparently you test for a white belt – and pay $35 for the privilege to do so). It is like a recital where you go watch, so we went. Curie is the smallest kid in the class by far. It was so cute. The teacher asks the class if anyone needs to use the bathroom before the test. The entire class except Curie runs off. Curie says looks at us with the “what? I don’t need to go” look. They do jumping jacks, push ups, low blocks, high blocks, kicks, simulated sparring, recite Korean numbers and words and tell their student creed. It is amazing and Curie only has to be asked to use the other hand once, one poor kid keeps using the wrong side and is asked a lot to switch hands or feet. It was a really good learning experience to see one kid not be able to break his board (more advanced students also tested) and not pass and to talk to Curie about it. The teachers are really good about self esteem and discipline, and Curie loves Mr. Arnold, her teacher and bus driver.

Curie said her tooth hurt and Erin called the dentist. There was a cancellation the next day and so she took Curie to have her tooth extracted. Albert was in Bloomington and beside himself. Erin told Albert he shouldn’t go to those kind of dentist visits any more. On the other hand, Elia had a great visit, and it might be genetics, or how Curie was in the womb, but Elia had a very different dentist experience. Curie had to take antibiotics while waiting for her original appointment and started with a lot of whining, but after a while, it became more routine, which was a relief. She does dislike grape candy because of the grape flavored Motrin though. Curie now shows off the space with her friends, chooses healthy foods and puts back sugary snacks even when Albert says they are okay (bad Albert).

Curie was the evil queen for Halloween as we posted earlier and wants to be the evil queen next year as well. She is very independent in her thinking, though can hesitate when making decisions. Curie had a great time with Etta and Isabella trick-or-treating. Elia loved it too. Choosing to be an evil queen instead of Snow White is the queen vs. princess thing we think but there is something cool about the independence to not be what everyone else was. Another incident was the Happy Meal toys where the girl toy you could comb her hair and only one arm moved, where the boy toy would shoot things or have wings that opened. Curie was indignant and asked Erin to write in to Old MacDonalds.

Albert stresses about school and testing, got nervous for the white belt testing, agonized over needing to work on the letters and so on. Erin worries about the whining, and baby talk. We both worry about food and sleep and all sorts of things. But here is the thing, Curie is doing great, she is smiling, loves the things she does, plays teacher at home all the time. And there is something more fundamental, she defends Elia, takes care of Elizabeth (Katie’s sister) and any little kid. She told us the Winnie the Pooh movie, “makes me cry” because they can’t find Christopher Robin. And most tellingly this month, Curie offered her coat without asking to a little girl she was playing tag with because the little girl said she was cold. Curie has a good heart and that makes us prouder than anything else.

So Curie started kindergarten, taking martial arts, made new friends, rode the bus, turned five, had a birthday party at Flight trampoline park with her pre-school and kindergarten friends all in one week.

Oh it has been hard having Curie go to school. She is exposed to so much more, learning so much, and having a great time; but for the parents it is learning the new normal, anxiety for your children’s happiness and success, packing lunch, dropping off, bus rides, new pick-up hard stops at work and more. All parents do it, so it is not like it is any different for us, but at the same time, it feels overwhelming for us; so much so, that Albert has had to start instituting a half-full policy for himself.

In kindergarten, Curie has Mrs. Best a strict but fun 30-year veteran teacher. Curie is the youngest in the class and has had to catch up on many things, capital letters, lower case letters counting up to twenty, counting down from twenty, reading colors, all things that we wish we had known when she was at Bright Horizons. We have since let them know that they need to help better prepare their students. For us, it simply means that we need to spend time every day with lessons for Curie, so we set aside some time, bought letters an posters, and Curie eagerly dives in. The fact that she likes school so much is wonderful and a godsend. Her favorite thing to play with us now is being the teacher at school, though she is always the teacher because she is in charge.

She is learning a lot too, they have all sorts of songs they learned, “Da rules, da rules, da classroom rules.” Every Tuesday they have a folder to bring home and in it is the work they have done. She brings home the cutest things she has made in school, a Humpty Dumpty, an ant with body parts labeled (and song sung to “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes.”), little work books for learning numbers and more. She is exhausted everyday though running through all her energy in a day that we have looked to raise her caloric intake to help boost her energy. This is offset by the need to help her sugar intake for her teeth since she has had to have a lot of dental work because of her soft enamel as a result of being born early. The dental visits have been horrible and traumatic. We have one to go, and it is an extraction. She bounces back relatively quickly from them, but for us as parents it is very hard.

Curie takes martial arts as her after-school program. A bus picks her up every day after school. Her friend Etta has joined her and they go together. Etta is Curie’s best friend at school and is a year older and a head taller. The martial arts class loves Curie who is the smallest one there and the kids like to draw pictures for her. Curie likes to teach us martial arts too, taekwondo to be exact. She is learning to be more respectful, and learning discipline in her class, which has not always translated to home yet. Her friend Layla got her white belt, and Curie is excited to get hers as well.

We have had time with kids from her old pre-school spending time at dinner with Lucy and Nora at Olive Garden, birthday parties for Chloe, Natalie, and Maggie, dinner with Navee, who she tried to hug all night. We have had time with her new friends as well, play dates with Layla, Isabella, and Etta. She and Etta hold hands walking to the classroom from the cafeteria. The first day of school she walked holding hands with Katie the other kindergartener who rides the bus with her when they couldn’t find their room. Another older kid takes them there now. Curie also loves the kids who have helped her, Riley the bus monitor is someone that Curie looks up to.

There has been a lot of change and the important thing to realize is all of this is a part of growing up. Albert’s mother recounts that Suephy had trouble starting kindergarten, but it did not stop her from being as successful as she is, it just takes being involved as parents and teaching and reinforcing the learning in school, staying ahead of lessons, helping with homework, getting her focused on the right things. She is more tired after school and just wants to go home to play. She needs more Mommy time and asks for playdates with Mommy or Daddy. It feels like we have less time as a family because of the obligations and the structure. Curie is taking it all in stride and it is just our “new-normal” as Albert likes to call it.

Curie’s backpack is a small kids pack we got at REI when she was two, it is the size of a purse-backpack to get a sense of what we mean. In it she puts in her lunch bag, her snack, her martial arts snack, the Tuesday folder, if it is Tuesday or Wednesday, her library book (she loves the library), a t-shirt for martial arts and sometimes a jacket if she has taken it off, and her water bottle. The backpack is tiny but so jammed packed with things, and even though it is not a full sized backpack, it is huge on her. After we carry her to the bus stop she dutifully puts it on and runs to the bus, sometimes forgetting to kiss us goodbye. The backpack is kind of like our days, full of stuff, seemingly small and too big at the same time, dutifully worn, and with a tiny keychain on it for good luck.

Curie will start kindergarten soon, the day after Labor Day (because of Virginia’s King’s Dominion Law we understand) and as a part of getting ready, we were asked to write a letter about her so that her teacher could get to know her before the start of the school year. Here is a draft of what we wrote:

“Dear Ms Best

We hope you are well.

Thank you for being Curie’s kindergarten teacher this year, and likely like all the parents of the class, we go into this new phase in Curie’s development with equal parts nervousness, hope, and pride.

If you were to ask Curie what her powers are, she would tell you that she is smart, brave, strong and fast. When you ask her what her superpower is, she is as likely as not to say that she can use her “smell” to find things.

We have done our best to instill certain values especially around concepts of beauty, and doing the right thing. We were the proto-typical anti-Disney princess parents (we have relented somewhat as she has gotten older, we are still resistant to Barbie though), when someone would call Curie princess when she was young we worked on her so that she would respond “no, I am the King.” At pre-school, that has since become “I am a Queen,” and “my Daddy doesn’t want me to be a princess, I am a Queen.”

This is not to say that she doesn’t love the princesses and My Little Pony, she loves her toys and pretending with them. We have worked with Curie to understand that anyone is pretty if they are smiling regardless of gender and physical appearance, but more importantly we have been instilling that beauty is in your actions, that you are beautiful if you do beautiful things. This has manifested in learning to do the right thing, protecting her sister or other little kids at the playground, giving up all of her shovels and pails at the sandbox to kids who might need them.

Curie will be four going into kindergarten and will turn five that Saturday. She will be among the younger ones in her class (a friend of hers, Layla, is eight months older than her), but she has been precocious from the beginning, Curie was small at birth, a peanut at four pounds seven ounces, but alert and ahead of almost all of her milestones growing up (at her two-year-old check-up, the one thing she didn’t hit ahead on milestones was jumping, but upon hearing the doctor say that, she spent the afternoon practicing until she could jump). Curie was also an early talker and her first “words” were “all done,” and was very articulate and verbal by one and a half. In fact, we missed some of the cute learning to speak until we had her sister Elia. Yes, she will be one of the youngest in the class, but we felt that she would have been bored if we had kept her one more year.

We are, as all parents should be, proud of Curie (and her sister) and have high expectations for them, but we are not so blind as to not see some of her short comings as a four-to-be-five year-old either. She has had a bit of the “gimmies” lately and will be upset if she feels slighted, or wronged, she is exploring her boundaries a bit. She responds well to calm and caring logical explanation if she is crying (it helps if you are holding her when explaining things) and is quick to learn from her mistakes.

Trying to encapsulate your child in a single letter is impossible of course, but we hope this is at least a little glimpse into Curie and how to connect with her. We have worked in various areas of education, (Albert works for in educational non-profits now, PDK International these days) and we know the importance and value of early childhood education and establishing a nurturing and strong foundation. We hope this letter will help you build that bond with our child and allow you to teach her and help her grow in your care. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Parents of Curie Chen, Albert and Erin”

A lot has happened this month including our vacation to Toronto and Niagara Falls, the girls’ first hair cut, and more. Curie has been sharing a lot more with Elia, going so far as to give her food or toys she has because Elia wants them (Elia is testing her boundaries these days and sometimes gets what she wants by bullying Curie, which we are trying to work on).

As we said in our last blog, the Olympics coincided with our vacation, and as we learned about being in another country (both Curie and Elia will say “that is our flag” when we see an American flag now, though Elia says “dat our flag.”), and discovering what is different between our countries, flags, Kinder eggs, signs etc… We of course wrote about our trip to Centreville at the Toronto Islands and after their trip there, when Albert asked Curie what they have in Canada that we don’t have in the U.S. Curie said pony rides, because she had her first pony ride there (Curie rode a big pony, Brandy and Elia rode a little pony, Merlin).

After watching the Olympics while in Toronto, the kids jumping on the bed chanting USA! USA! while the swimmers raced in the pool was one of the highlights of our trip. Curie can now recognize Michael Phelps on TV, and the Final Five on magazine covers without prompting. She loves to race in the pool with her floaties on paddling away. It is wonderful. After watching women’s Olympic gymnastics one night, Curie asked us to turn off the TV do we could all watch her “safe gymnastics.”

A lot of change right now, finishing pre-school and being one of the last kids in day care means she has seen most of her friends go on their last days. She instead plays with very little girl who she likes to take care of in her class. She is ready for kindergarten, even if we are not. She is proud of her after-school martial arts uniform, has gone on a playdate with one of her new classmates, and though we suspect she has some trepidation, has been focused on the new. It is hard to believe she is about to go to school and at the same time we are proud and know that she will do great. More next time, right now we are going to go cuddle with our daughters.