Category: Curie Months

When your kids are the most important thing in the world, it is easy to lose our identity and only be the parents of your kids. At the same time, in times of trouble sometimes your kids are the only thing that get you through. At this age Curie is beyond some of the more simple milestones, but well into the more sophisticated realm of understanding and humor.

Curie loves to frame her caring and some of her self-worth in her connection to Elia. She is proud of when Elia can do something, “Mommy, its her first word (when it well is not)!” She feels loved when Elia holds her hand “Mommy, look, Elia is holding my hand!” And she cries when Elia is too busy to hug her. As we teach the kids about being beautiful from within, we shouldn’t be surprised when they do act in amazing ways, but we are.

Julie and Steve finally got engaged, and Erin mentioned that we would have to buy an engagement gift for them, at some point. Later in the day, when we were at the mall to have lunch, Curie insisted on going for a walk with Albert. Once away from the restaurant, Curie said to Albert, “we need to buy a present.” “For whom?” Albert asked. “For Julie and Steve!” And she did, she picked out a black insulated water bottle for Steve and a matching red water bottle for Julie, and gave it to Julie to open – note that she did want to see Julie open it, even before Steve was there.

Then Albert gave Curie money for her to buy her own prizes for herself and Elia at the toy store. Once there, she made it a point to buy everyone a present, because, in her words, “it wouldn’t be fair” if only Julie and Steve got gifts.

In recent days, as she gets tired and frustrated, she runs to the landing on the stairs to the basement and sits there to be by herself and cry for a while. Albert often sits with her and holds her until she calms down. It is a learning time for her as she learns to adjust to learning boundaries and dealing with her emotions. The reality is that she needs to get more sleep, but she doesn’t want to miss the fun.

She loves running “super-fast” and asks you to watch her. One of their favorite past times is when Curie and Elia “run around the kitchen” which entails running through the kitchen, through the dining room, and back around to the kitchen. They take off their socks to make sure they don’t slip and run pell mell through the house.

She is experimenting with mock surprise recently as well. She loves to cock her head and open her eyes and mouth wide and say “bah?” As if surprised for the first time at something. She will also say things like “what? I like” this or that. We are learning to do things other than watch TV and buy toys and have gone so far as to buy Plasticine clay to make our own figures. We made a family with a silicone clay mold, and she loved it. We made a little frog and worm after and Elia appropriated them and took them to school in plastic eggs. Since then we have made our own chocolates in the molds and made figures two more times, making them to look like superheroes.

Curie loves superheroes and loved to watch the Metroman parts of Megamind. She has also been watching the Incredibles and loves Mr. Incredible and Violet. When we went to sign her up for her martial arts class for after school, she watched the ongoing martial arts class in rapture.

In the last few days, she has wanted to spend time with Albert and Erin at different times, and has wanted to garden as one of the play dates. She remembers the times with Albert when he used to stay up with her to watch things, and when we were watching Annie with Elia, Curie spoke up to say that she used to spend time watching it with Albert.

Curie has started changing her tastes, re-engaged in water play, found new things smelly and gross, liked new foods, and stopped liking others. Grape flavored fluoride is okay now, and mint is not. She likes her noodles with the sauce now, but no longer likes green beans. She loves mashed potatoes and gravy from KFC and will drink the gravy, but does not like butter. She knows that she shouldn’t eat sugar, but loves that we give her sugarless treats.

Life is challenging and meant to be, and while having kids makes the stakes higher, they also give us reason to exist and persevere. As Curie, and Elia, grow, the interactions become more complex as they develop their personalities and identities. It is a challenge to understand that they must grow out of us, and a fleeting, aching, parental caring that they still love you unconditionally. It is almost not enough to to use the word “love” to talk about our kids, and at the same time the word “love” is impossibly big, know what we mean?

The challenges of daily life are softened a lot by having kids, in the past month, we have not rented our house, had our VW Bug go into the shop 3 times, had our American Express hacked, and gotten sick. But that is all made okay by having our kids to take our minds off of these worries and give us perspective.

As we said in Elia’s blog, we went to California this month and spent some time with Bernard and Agnes’s family. Curie loves Eleanor and Miranda, which we suspect is because she sees them as role models. We also blogged about Kula in Torrance, but if you think of it from Curie’s perspective, she loves “sushi choo-coo” restaurants, loves surprise eggs, and loves cartoons. This restaurant had it all. Never mind Uncle Luiz gave her (and Elia) a Shopkins play set!

Curie is precocious and very funny, one morning Curie put her legs on Erin’s in bed, and when Erin playfully told her to take them off, Curie took one off in a high pitched voice, then took the other off in a low pitched voice. Erin asked her what was going on, and Curie told her that one leg was a girl and one leg was a boy.

The Hoaglands have had us over to their local pool. Curie’s first pool experience was in this pool when Albert dunked her. It must have made an impression because she now does not like to have her face wet; so when we went back to the pool, Curie was a little tentative (Elia was a fish to water). Curie is older now and has outgrown the infant life-jackets, so she wore floaties for the first time. It turns out she can reach the bottom in the 3 ft end and loved the water and was learning to kick as long as we were holding her. The second time in the pool she found out that Elia was jumping in the pool and that Albert had let Elia float and swim by herself. This made her braver and soon she was also jumping and swimming by herself in the pool. We are thinking of swimming lessons for both of them.

Curie’s enamel in her teeth never formed properly being born early so has had some trouble with her teeth. We have begun to change our lifestyle to become more healthy. We need to for Curie, but we will all benefit from the change. What has resulted are some night terrors and a fear of brushing for a while. We are also applying fluoride, which only comes in three flavors, grape (Curie hates grape because it is the flavor of children’s Advil and reminds her of medicine), mint (she doesn’t like strong mint because it is too spicy), and bubble gum (which they were out of, and for toothpaste, she likes berry over bubble gum), so we got grape, and she screams at how disgusting it is every time we do it.

Curie is going to start kindergarten soon and it is amazing how fast it has gone. We will enroll her into an after school martial arts program and have her join some clubs. The upcoming change is so disconcerting; Albert’s job mainly deals with change management and part of that is understanding that when you are effecting change you are less afraid, but this is not our choice, it is just what is happening. At day care, changes are afoot as well. Julie is leaving Bright Horizons, and many of Curie’s classmates have had their last day. We intend on making a Facebook group of Curie’s closest friends as an alumni group for Bright Horizons so that we can stay in touch. An then there was the Pre-K graduation: because of a conference, Albert missed it, which really depressed him. Before it happened, he let Curie know that he was sorry and was sad that he would miss it. Curie in her wisdom said, “that’s all right, Daddy, I will remember the song for you.”

Reading the notes for this post, things on it seem so long ago.

Curie went to her first martial arts class to see if she would be comfortable there with if she did after school activities, and Albert had an empathetic conniption remembering the discomfort he had with anything new at that age; Curie is a much stronger soul apparently because though she was learning while she was participating, she loved it. Afterward, she wanted to play martial arts and be the teacher while showing us what we were supposed to do including when to stand and when to sit. She told all her friends she was going to learn to fight like Rey, and Albert’s emotional fragility aside, we will likely enroll her even if she doesn’t need it for after school.

In this time we have had a bit of a rough time while trying to rent out our old house. Albert was not getting enough sleep, had some vertigo and generally was not taking care of himself. Curie in her infinite and innocent caring told Albert: “Dada, get some rest okay?” And another time when he was so tired that he had his head in his hands, she asked “Dada, why are you sad?” What an amazing girl.

For the longest time we called Froot Loops vacation Cheerios and that is what Curie would call them but in this month she identified them as Froot Loops in the store making us feel a little sad that she was growing up; we want her to be everything she is supposed to be, but we can’t help feel that we want her as her little girl too. We need to enjoy each moment including the whining and a crying and embrace each step.

Curie loves My Little Pony but understands that the new over sexualized ponies as girls are bad, just like she knows we don’t like Barbie except for the doctor one. Well anyway, we indulge her quite a bit with blind bags (which Elia has picked up) and has been trying to get a Princess Celestia. Well, Albert being the softy realized that we were better off spending a little more on eBay or Amazon buying someone who already got Princess Celestia and bought it for her. Of course not thinking things through, he only bought one and when the package arrived, Elia wanted hers, leading Albert to have to buy another. Note, after getting it, Elia has not played with it – of course.

We started making our own surprise eggs which is just as good for Curie as she makes her own surprise eggs videos as well. We don’t post any, but we have a 12 minute video of her opening eggs and narrating. She is quite good and we think it is good for her self-esteem.

We went to California at the end of the month for Erin’s work and found that Curie fit in a booster seat with a high back, so it might be time soon to change car seats for her. She was amazing on the trip, and we were terrible parents having her get up so early and sleeping so little. She held it together pretty well though, and was so good pulling the large car seat bag in the airport.

We say it a lot, and we’ll say it a lot more we love our girls, and the girls love each other. This month Curie asked Elia if she loved her, and finally got the response she wanted. With hugs, with family pictures, with holding hands insisting on prayers at the table, insisting that we eat at the dinner table at all, resting on our shoulder, telling us she loves us, Curie continues to light up our lives and fills us with an almost overwhelming sense of caring for her.

Elia is at that phase in life where her growth is outpacing our story-telling. At the beginning of the month she had just started saying “yeas” instead of “ya” and we quickly jotted this down. As the month progressed she could identify the animals from our zoo trip: “a da da dur,” alligator, “tee ta”, cheeta, and “cow,” bison. Her sentences started with “Ji-ji, pay?” Jie-jie will you play? to “Dada, me poo-poo, hep peas,” Daddy, I need to poo-poo in the potty, help please.

She has gone from “Ya-ya,” to “Ee-ya,” to “Lia.” When she asks what is this she says “that is?” Especially when it comes to Star Wars cards, she asks us who is on the card, “that is?”

The sophistication in her understanding and diction has come out in her speech as well. She started the bad habit of needing to “wash ecks daddy ipah,” watch eggs on Daddy’s iPad, which in turn translates into watch kids YouTube on Albert’s iPad. The other day she woke Erin up by telling her she had a bug on her face, and then when Erin jumped up rubbing her face and saying where? Elia then laughed and said “nooo” in a just kidding way.

She not only understands, but processes complex ideas and remembers them. Curie had her plan of giving us time to go to the movies a month ago, but that was delayed because of a snow storm. Curie had wanted Poppup and Grandmom to watch them so that we could see Star Wars (actually not Star Wars, but Curie had assumed we would want to see Star Wars because we had gone to Udvar and did this two viewing exchange with the kids when it came out). So we didn’t do it then, but when Poppup and Grandmom were coming this time, Curie said, “we need to do the plan,” and Elia spoke up, mind you no one had said anything about Star Wars, “Mama, Daddy, Star Wars.”

At the beginning of the month we were impressed the Elia wanted to use the potty, now she will ask almost every time. Earlier, loved to play with her horse, now rides the back of the couch pretending it is a horse: a shift in imagination. She buckles her own car seat chest buckle now, and has her own opinion when it comes to surprises. Curie will want ponies, Elia will want “sopkins,” Shopkins, or Star Wars cards.

Other things have happened too, she spilled Albert’s semi-permanent blue-black fountain pen ink all over her hands and feet, she wanted to learn martial arts when Curie went to take her class, she called it Star Wars though since we had talked to Curie about learning to fight like Rey. When we went to Dave and Buster’s she loved the coin game; when it came time to spend her 5,000 tickets, her first choice was a foot high Superman doll from the Animated Adventures of Superman, though she calls it “batman.”

At the end of the month, (the 15th for the purposes of this blog), she finally got her own back pack from REI. Curie has had hers for so long now but only recently started wearing it. Part of this is getting ready for school, but it is good to carry her toys. Elia loves luggage, she loves to pull a carry on, push luggage, and as it turns out, wear a back pack. She had been wearing the carry-on because she did not have her own back pack. So Albert bought her her own REI back pack, pink with green zippers. She loves her “pak-pak” so much that she wears it into the car seat to be buckled together with it. She is so pleased with it and takes it everywhere, she loves it almost as much as Star Wars, but not quite.

While Grandmom and Poppup were visiting Elia fell while gardening and bit the front and back of her lower lip, we thought it might have gone through, or would leave a scar. Albert had gone to Home Depot but Erin says there was a lot of blood. Scary, and at the same time it showed how resilient they are. She was laughing and eating meat later that night. No stitches, just Neosporin and hydrogen peroxide, and now, a few weeks later, it looks like we might have gotten lucky and it won’t scar much. We say it a lot, parenting is hard and it can be stressful, but it is also amazing and we wouldn’t give it up for the world.

So perhaps it is because May the Fourth is around the corner but most likely it is a coincidence, but Albert showed parts of Star Wars: The Force Awakens to Curie (and Elia) this month. We started with Rey and Finn in the Millennium Falcon with Albert holding Curie as he does  playing rocketship and mimicked the movements on the screen. She, of course, loved it; but here is the thing, she loved it even more because the main character was a girl, and strong, and in charge, and as parents, we loved that even more. Continue reading “Curie April 2016”

As we begin our move, we are working with the kids about the change and there have been a few reactions that have been emotional for us. After all, this is the house that the girls were born in. Now we are not selling the house, on the contrary, we are renting it out, but we will be in our new house, a rental so that Curie and Elia can have a better education than the school near our old house.

At first Curie didn’t like the idea of moving. Inside Out didn’t help matters, though a Sesame Street app did make it easier to talk about it. Albert spilled the beans before Erin could prepare Curie (Elia is going with the flow). It wasn’t until she found pink curtains in the house that we ended up with that she started liking the concept. Continue reading “Curie March 2016”

When drinking her lemonade, Erin overheard Curie say quietly, “I’m going to drink my potion now.”

It is a relief to hear such things in a day and age of screen time and unscheduled programming, even if it did seem a little sinister. Just the fact that she is using her imagination is a relief and a breath of fresh air. These days Legos are kits rather than conduits for imagination, but it is imagination that we want for our kids.

Curie loves the wicked queen from Snow White (no she has not seen the movie, but YouTube has told her who she is), but only because she has a pretty crown, so it was a bit of a surprise that she was muttering to herself about potions. Continue reading “Curie February 2015”

How do we describe what it is like in the Chen household these days?  Just look at the picture of Curie and Elia in their striped Dr. Seuss pajamas mugging for the camera. And for Curie, she has started posing with her cheek to her shoulder as her go-to pose.

While there are still the requisite “that’s mine!” or “no Elia!” the kids are playing together now all the time now. Curie will jump off the couch, prompting Elia to do so also, they both stand and hold the back of the recliner and rock vigorously on it singing “Row, Row, Row your Boat” at the top of their lungs. When they are excited they make the seventies “whoop whoop” disco noise together – usually at around 11 PM when everyone else is asleep. They are having a grand ole time together, and (for now) where Curie leads, Elia follows. Continue reading “Curie January 2016”

The night before Christmas, because Santa is over-busy getting presents to the kids who truly need it, Curie spent an hour helping him (no this is not going to rhyme), like all families should help him, by filling up the stockings so that Santa wouldn’t have to do it. She took her responsibility very seriously and put fruit, cookies, and snacks into each person’s stocking, taking the time to be thoughtful listening to us about who liked which kind of snack: “Poppop loves Oreos,” so she put two packs into his stocking and so on.

Christmas morning, she woke up at 7:30 and asked to be carried to the basement to see if Santa had come. Erin made sure not to put out any presents until the morning so that it would be magical. Because Albert’s family had never really done the “big” Christmas, he didn’t really understand the importance of the big reveal until he saw the look on Curie’s face with all the wonder and magic that you presume in a Christmas television special. Elia’s own wonderment fed off of Curie’s excitement. The magic of the moment (intentionally not captured on film so that we could experience our children’s reaction without having to see it through a view finder) was worth the trouble. And what Albert realized was that magic and the actual opening of the gifts were more important to Curie than any toy that she actually received.

This month, was all about the anticipation of Christmas for Curie, learning to sing “Rudolph,” then watching it, pointing out trees decorated with lights, and insisting on colored lights (for the first time for us) because she didn’t like white lights for decorations. Curie took it upon herself to turn on and off the Christmas tree lights every day as her responsibility.

On Elia’s birthday, Curie was so excited for her, however she did feel a little jealous of the attention and wanted to open a few presents of her own. Fortunately we did get her a little present of her own, and Elia was generous in letting Curie “help” her open her presents.

One of Curie’s “best friends in the whole wide world,” Bella turned 13 this year and babysat (with her parents) Curie and Elia this month giving us one of the first date nights since Elia was born to see Spectre in the theater. It was weird, but they had a great time. Bella also babysat the kids to let us see Star Wars on opening weekend (Erin is obsessed with Rey, BTW). In any case, on Christmas Eve, we saw it again at the Udvar Hazy Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in IMAX 3D on the 6 story screen with Erin’s family. We did it in two shifts so that we took care of the kids. While there, Curie was amazed by the space shuttle Discovery, reportedly commenting on how big the wings were. She even corrected her aunt Julie’s choice of “space man” with “astronaut.” After the movie, we went to the gift shop and Curie gravitated toward a plastic model of the Discovery. She said to Albert, “this is so cool,” and though she played around with many toys, she kept coming back to the model; four times. So we bought it for her. When your daughter expresses an interest in space and math, you just buy it right?

At home we ended up watching episodes 4, 5, and 6 (boycotting Episode 1 and subsequently its brethren after a few minutes of watching it). While we were watching them, we were eating snacks and Curie was eating the Cheez-Its. Erin’s mother loves Cheez-Its and asks us not to buy them because she will eat a whole box in one sitting. So Erin’s mother decides that she wants some Cheez-Its, and asks Curie for the box. Curie, who had stopped eating them at that point looks around the room. We thought she was looking for the box. Instead she says, in perfect timing, “where is my light saber?” And proceeds to find it, open it and protect the box from Erin’s mother. Best line of the night for us.

Other things in passing: we discovered the reason that Curie doesn’t like grape flavored candy even though Curie’s favorite color is purple. She was able to tell us that it was because it tastes like the medicine we give her when she has fevers, which is grape-flavored. This is remarkable because you usually are too young to remember the association and only know that you don’t like it, much less articulate it. Another thing is that she has begun telling Albert that his belly looks like he is having a baby, and tells him he should exercise (BTW “daddy’s big tummy” is a phrase from Peppa Pig used as a secret password in an episode and now used instead of “please” when you say “what do you say?” When she asks for something). Not only that, she then says, “you should play racquetball with Uncle David,” matter-of-factly. And yes Albert could stand to lose a few pounds.

The remarkable part, outside of outing Albert’s lack of fitness, is that the following morning when Curie had woken half-asleep and crying that Albert was able to recount her conversation with him about his big tummy and in a rational discussion, was able to instantly calm down to where she told explained to Erin that Albert needed to go play racquetball to exercise because he looked like he was having a baby instead of what you might expect: not remembering the conversation at all, being emotional and wailing that Daddy shouldn’t go. She is at an age where she throws micro tantrums and whines when she wants something, but there is also a very rational young lady in there that is learning and testing and discovering. We will only know that we did it right when we are 80 (okay Erin will be 80, Albert may never know) but just that glimpse of her rational self makes us hopeful.

BTW there are two versions of the collage for December. One used in the grandparents’ photobooks because they were made early in the month and this one.

Oh, and the head tilt is one of the poses that she learned from the photographer at school after which she showed Erin how to pose for pictures.

There was an article recently in the Washington Post on what to do when you think the world is a terrible place and number 2 is to watch kids play;  when we are down, watching Curie and Elia play is an astonishing salve for the soul (and those of you without kids can come over and spend time with ours), and gives us some perspective.

Curie is growing up a lot, you don’t see it as much in the pictures as you do with Elia, but she is becoming more sophisticated and endearing. We saw “Inside Out” at a theater that serves food and shows older films. Elia fell asleep, but Curie, having seen it before and knowing it was Bella’s first time watching it (Bella is 13 mind you), held Bella’s hand at the scary parts and hugged bella when Bing Bong died. At the beginning of the movie, we were afraid it might be too much for Curie, so we asked her to take care of Bella, and even though it was Albert’s suggestion, she did, she took the responsibility to take care of her friend and held her when Bing Bong died. How amazing is that?

She loves taking care of Elia and one night asked Erin to tell her when Elia woke up crying because she wanted to take care of her little sister. She kept trying to stay awake waiting for Elia to cry but ended up falling asleep next to her. Another time, Albert was having a bad day and though we try not to burden our kids with issues they don’t need to carry, they can sense when something is wrong. Albert was sad, and Curie came up to him, spontaneously gave him a hug and asked why he was sad.

She is still very much the four-year old though, learning to somersault, jumping down three stairs at a time, pretending she is a frog and shouting “ribbit!” The frog is particularly cute because she sets up with her hands in front of her before making her leap each time.

At Thanksgiving, she worked very hard to keep up with her older cousin’s play, and they were great for the most part in including her. With their help, she won at bingo, played Tenzi, and judged the drawing contest with her Ah-gong. When the family went out for a walk and run, we split up onto two groups, with us being the walking group and Bernard and Agnes and the older kids being the running group. Somehow as we got ready, Curie was playing and ended up running with the running group. Agnes said that when they started Curie bolted at full tilt for two blocks, making everyone take her pace, before she ran out of steam. She took charge of the Frisbee and threw it quite a bit, and on the playground she did not hold back playing. When the kids did not put her name on the list for the ping-pong tournament, she went to Erin sad, but when Erin put her down as the special helper she was elated, and told everyone.

At the Thanksgiving meals, beautifully hosted by Ed, Suephy, Jared, and Dylan, she discovered that she loved ham and baked potatoes in addition to turkey and steak, and of course pumpkin pie. She had learned that she loved turkey when she and Albert spent Thanksgiving lunch at her school together. One of the best parts of Thanksgiving for Albert’s mom was to spend time teaching Curie to draw. Curie was patient and responsive and they learned to draw rainbows together. Albert’s mom was most impressed that Curie not only knew her colors, but in what order they went on the rainbow.

Curie still gets frustrated and whines as a four year-old  might, but she is learning, becoming more patient, and discovering she can do new things. She is proud that she can do Velcro for instance, something that we thought she knew, but she made it a point to show us. She and Erin learn a new word each night to write and is delighted when we show how proud we are of her. Someone on a blog on Facebook wrote that children just want to see that you are delighted to see them, and that is true. She wants Julie to babysit, she saw Tangled, and Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo. Oh, and she saw Frosty the snowman at Thanksgiving.

And then, she is funny in other ways. We have this restaurant we like called Pho Factory near us which opened when Curie was born. Curie loves the owner and always wants to go to “Andy’s restaurant,” which refers to Andy’s other restaurant Eden Kitchen instead of Pho Factory because there is a waiter who loves Curie, but talked too much to her and made her uncomfortable. Well that waiter is no longer at the restaurant and though we told Curie this, she still refused to go. Then one day when we were deciding where to go, Curie suggested Pho Factory because she knew it was Andy’s restaurant and close. She was nervous about going but told us she wanted to go anyway’ that was particularly sophisticated to us.

Maybe its because it was just Thanksgiving or perhaps it is because of the challenges of the year, or simply its the holiday blues (or perhaps it is because Susan Sarandon said there was going to be a segment on it on NPR through PRI), but the idea of gratitude has really hit home as of late.  There is no mistake that life can be seen as finding our way through suffering but the concept of gratitude really drives home the idea of joy and peace. In our times of angst, we often think that if only we had “x” or “y” then we would be cured or saved, when in reality it takes a fundamental change in your heart to effect that change. Each and everyone of us has a different support structure that could be pets, or friends, or faith, or community, for some of us with kids, it is parenting and the idea of parenting – and as a result the appreciation of having been parented. Before this becomes too preachy, suffice to say that our lives have been greatly enriched by Curie and Elia, and it is remembering all these little things that happen that drive these writings and how long they have become. Thanks for reading.