Category: Curie Months

With Halloween, our trip to California, and our anniversary, we have not had the chance to post Curie’s monthly collage so, seven days late, here we are.

If you recall, for her birthday, Curie got an Elsa nightgown which was a capitulation on Albert’s part. We told her she could wear it for Halloween as well. In the meantime, Curie saw Brave, Wall-E, Finding Nemo, and Monsters, Inc, (of the movies, only Monsters, Inc was too scary for her), and went to the doctor – who always impresses Curie. So for Halloween, she wanted to be Dr. Elsa Merida, this we have mentioned before in the Halloween entry. When we asked her what Elia should be she at first said “Anna,” but then changed her mind and wanted Elia to be just like her complete with her own bow and stethoscope, which we thought was pretty considerate. The result was that Elia went as Curie for Halloween.

You may also recall that Albert bought Erin’s bow long before he ever met her, and before we had kids, we used to shoot almost every weekend. We haven’t been since having Curie, but we have always intended on going back as evidenced by Albert buying a bow for Curie before she was born. While we were in California for Erin’s work and visiting relatives, Curie found a toy bow at Daiso, a Japanese dollar store ($1.50) which she wanted. It was in someone else’s basket that looked abandoned on the floor, so we waited for a while and when no one came to claim it Albert took it and bought it for her. She loves to shoot. She shot at the park, in the hotel room and posed for the infamous “Merida and Horse” picture. “Brave” definitely has made an influence, and she was very interested when we told her about her real bow that she could get when she turned 5.

Also for Halloween, we went as Acapella Mimes to the Hoagland party, where you can see in the photos from that party that Curie was just as game to pose as a mime as any of us. For trick-or-treating, we went with Natalie and her parents around our neighborhood which was adorable to watch the two together. In addition to Halloween and California, we went to the Great Country Farm, where Curie demonstrated a great affinity for the animals, saying they were her favorite thing even more than the jumping pillow, though she does call them “aminals.” It is funny because Elia is particularly afraid of actual animals at this point.  It was also amazing to watch Curie go from very tentative to getting big air on the jumping pillow. In California, we went to the Exploratorium, which is amazing if you haven’t been. Albert’s family used to go to the older location a lot as kids. Curie’s favorite exhibit was the animation station where she spent the most time at any one exhibit.

Activities aside, she has really started to play with Elia, jumping into the playpen from the bed yelling “cannonball! (and Elia copying her)”  She and Elia like to sit on top of the back of the couch and jump down together. When Elia gets upset, Curie has taken on the role of making the “shh, shh, shh” noise to calm her down and you know, it really works. They play trains together, Legos, and dance together. She thinks it is great that Elia is starting to talk more and likes to play a game in the car to see how many words we can make Elia say.  Its funny we thought it was important for Curie to have a sibling, and as they start to be best friends for one another, it warms the heart to think that they will have each other even after we are gone (okay, really it is Albert who thinks like that).

As Curie grows, she has become more complex and engaging.  In California she showed the Chen competitiveness, and made it a point to eat three servings of macaroni and cheese to prove she could eat more than her cousin Eleanor. At school, she came home once and said that she got married to a lot of people (boys and girls), and rumor has it that she has been holding a little boy’s hand and having him get her coat. She loves saying “boo!” to Albert when she gets home from school to startle him.

Curie loves to help cook and is upset if there is nothing for her to do. She wants to have a grown-up look after her which is code for “spend time with me.” She wants us to play with her, and watch with her, and take care of her. She is perfectly capable of going to the potty by herself, but insists on someone helping her. She loves when we do things as a family, or feeling special with Erin or Albert separately – “Mommy and me are going to do that, right?” She is still learning what beautiful and pretty means (she told her cousins that she can get an Elsa doll if she smiles more and does good things – no, she has not forgotten), but she acts beautiful all the time holding the door, waiting for everyone to come to the table to eat, wanting to say grace together, watching out for her sister, and so many more things. And she continues to make us laugh aloud with her antics: earlier this month, when she had to go brush her teeth, she turned mid-way to the bathroom, looked back at us with one index finger raised and said “I’ll be back in a jiffy!” What four year old says thing like that? Adorable.

Learning what it means to be pretty and what it means to be beautiful. Curie turned four this month, and received a doll for her birthday, Sleeping Beauty, in fact. Erin is against this type of “hard doll” for the impossible body type impression it can make on a girl, so we re-gifted it. Curie was only okay with it because Aurora is a princess, and as we have mentioned Curie is working on being a queen or king. Well, Elsa is a queen and Curie is a little fixated on replacing her Aurora with an Elsa “hard doll,” specifically in the “bad Elsa dress ( the blue one).”

So we are at the Disney store where Curie has an Elsa hard doll clasped in her arms asking to buy it. While Erin takes Elia to the restroom to be changed, Albert has a long conversation with Curie that paraphrased, goes something like this: “we want you to understand that no  one looks like cartoon characters and to be pretty and to be beautiful are not about what you look like. If you smile you are pretty, it doesn’t matter what you look like, do you understand?” She of course says yes, because she wants the doll. “Let’s go around the store and you tell me who is pretty.” Amazingly there are very few people smiling in a Disney store. Eventually we find someone who is smiling and we say together that that person is pretty.

So Albert asks her, “what does it mean to be pretty?” Curie points at her mouth and smiles, “That’s right, Albert says and then presses on, “Do you know what it means to be beautiful?” Curie shakes her head. “To be beautiful comes from your heart, when you are kind, when you are considerate, when you take care of others, you are beautiful. So tell me what does it mean to be beautiful?” Curie shrugs her shoulders, “I don’t know.” So Albert repeats it to her. When he asks again she says “it comes from the heart.” He pushes, what does that mean? After a few more repeats she says, “you have to be nice to people, and take care of them.” Again, she can say the words, but does she mean them? “Curie, what if we said we are not going to buy the doll today and we will see if you learn what it means to be pretty and beautiful.” “But I want it!” “What if you saw a little girl who was crying because her parents couldn’t afford a doll? Did you know if you had one and gave it to her, I would buy you another one? Because that would be beautiful.” Albert recounts for Curie when she gave away her sand shovel selflessly as a beautiful act.

“Okay, what does it mean to be pretty?” It is something like the tenth time, Curie answers correctly. “What does it mean to be beautiful?” Curie answers correctly. “Our friends are waiting for us for dinner, and we are late, what should we do?” Curie says:

“Let’s go find them, we can always come back some other time.”

From “but I want it,” to “we can always come back,” in thirty minutes. Albert tells her that is very considerate and very beautiful. She says “let’s go tell Mommy!” Erin picks the ball right up and tells her how beautiful that act was. As parents we are proud, but it is just one data point – one day. Albert reinforces as we walk through the mall going so far as to extol what Curie has done to a stranger. The man smiles and says he is proud of her. “See, he thinks you are beautiful. And did you see his smile? He was so pretty.” Coming out the mall, a person is holding the door open for us, Albert asks Curie, “what is the beautiful thing to do?” Curie holds the door for the people in back of us – ironically a gaggle of girls with American Girl dolls, and in the garage Curie says “let’s wait for Mama and Elia,” which Albert says loudly in a stage voice so the American Girls can hear “see, that is a being considerate, it’s a beautiful thing you are doing,” and Curie beams with pride and says “let’s tell Mama!” Albert says t0 her, “see your smile? That makes you so pretty.”

We are probably going to buy the doll soon, but haven’t yet. When she forgets to be nice or whines, we now say, that wasn’t very beautiful, and she quickly smiles and says “oh, sorry!” When she gives up her candy to share with Elia, we tell her she is being beautiful and slowly we reinforce the lesson. Who knows if it will stick, but when you tell her she has done something beautiful, she smiles this giant, very pretty smile.

Other things happened this month of course. After Curie stopped sucking her thumb, her teeth are starting to relax by themselves and straighten out. She loves to help cook and spends a lot of time preparing things in the kitchen. She wants gloves and tools to help rake and garden in the back yard. She raided all of her play-doh from her birthday and toys to try to make a giant play-doh egg like she sees in videos. Our family is regularly the subject of her drawings. On the way to her four-year check up she said that she wants to be a doctor and had Albert bring her “shot” and stethoscope to the appointment; upon seeing the doctor sling the stethoscope around her neck sideways, Curie mimicked her in the examination room and has begun doing the same at home. For Halloween she wants to be Elsa as a doctor. Queen Elsa, M.D.

She holds us to promises, has a memory like a steel trap. She loves, loves, loves Elia, going so far to be protective. On our New Orleans trip, Bernard joked that Elia could become part of their family and Curie said, “Elia is MY sister, she is part of OUR family, right Mama?” Curie loves her cousins as well, hugging Eleanor a lot and wanting to hold either twin’s hand during the trip. She is a lot younger than her cousins, so it is hard for her especially when her cousins are distracted to older things. One thing they all did together though, was beignet dancing. We recounted when we were last in New Orleans and had beignets which with the sugar caused Curie to dance around Cafe du Monde. So after each beignet this trip, they all danced around Cafe du Monde.

During the New Orleans trip she said a number of funny and fantastic things. She legitimately called security, “surgery” “I have to take my luggage to surgery.” When we were separated at security and reunited, she proclaimed “we’re a family again!” When things happen she likes to say “check!” As if checking things off on her list. And when our phone batteries had died after dinner and she couldn’t watch anything, she thought for a moment on how to entertain herself and said, “I know, I’ll use my brain!” Eliciting smiles from all of us; she doesn’t know she is being sweet and adorable. After dinner the twins were drawing and Albert gave Curie his pen to draw. She said to them, “my Dad gave me this pen, he always has what I need.”

It is not all cute and adorable though. We play crazy games in the car as we have mentioned, like “What Color is That Sound?” The new one is to make up new songs. Curie engaged us in a rigmarole song ten minutes long about a sad boy with no shoes in a swimming pool building french fry houses, eating them and then getting sick, that had us in stitches; her comedic sense of timing has only gotten better. Finally, we encourage her to have scientific observations and praise her when she notices something particular (Erin is particularly good at encouraging this). We end this post with a matter-of-fact observation that Curie told Albert out of the blue in the airport. “Daddy?” She says as they walk toward the restrooms. “Pee always comes before poo.” “What?” Albert asks. “Pee comes before poo.” she repeats. Albert gives it a thought – “you are right, that is a good observation.” Curie beams with pride and you can almost see her say “check!” In her head, at another truism checked off. And with that satisfied smile, it really does make her such a pretty little girl.

1. A smile makes you pretty regardless of what you look like.
2. Beauty comes from your heart and from what you do.
3. You can use your brain to entertain yourself.
4. Pee comes before poo.

Recently, Albert told Curie that the first song he ever sang to her the day she was born was “You’re the Inspiration” by Chicago and she wanted to dance with him (they apparently have been learning to formally dance at school). Albert danced on his knees and Curie rested her head on his chest. Albert unshaven, without hair product, in an undershirt and shorts and still magical. Then, later in the night, right before bedtime, she wanted to do it again.

There are days Curie asks us to pick her up, and though there are days that she feels too heavy, we also have friends whose children are becoming teenagers or going to college, and we are pressed to think, how many more times will we be able to pick her up and hold her?

She is growing up, she will tell us matter-of-factly, and taking responsibility, “it’s my fault” after accidentally hitting Elia. She recognized that certain foods did not hurt her mouth when she had hand foot mouth disease, and later when her four-year molars started coming in. It was because she was cognizant of that, that she cried so much, disappointed that even the ice cream and cookies she was banking on still hurt her mouth. The one benefit of hand-foot-mouth, is that Curie stopped sucking her thumb finally.

There are a lot of influences at school bearing on her too. One night she said “books are boring,” which shocked us. “Who told you this?” She mentioned that a girl at school told her. Not wanting this to be a core memory (a la Inside Out), Albert read books that she liked and taught her how to respond if the girl said it again: “you just haven’t read the right book,” which she uses if we ask her if books are boring. The book she loves the most right now is an old one called Show Me. In it you learn where your nose is etc… Albert, however, has turned it into an irritating game where in cahoots the two of them and Elia go and find the parts on Mommy including all the nuzzling and tickling. Erin is a good sport about it, and it made Curie love books again. “Where is your nose? Is that where it grows? Let me nuzzle your nose.” Fortunately it ends with a big hug, so it is all right.

Along the same lines, some of her best friends made up an arbitrary rule that only the girl with the longest dress can be Elsa from Frozen. At first Curie was just asking for big dresses, which we couldn’t figure out after all the Superman shirts. Then when she told us, we taught her to tell the girl that all of them could be Elsa, it took some doing, but it worked and now she can be Elsa whenever she wants. The other girl has also decided to stand up and be Elsa as well. Curie wants to be “bad Elsa,” the one with the magic powers.

With her birthday coming up, we experimented with a number of things to see if she would like them. We went ice skating (she pushed a Home Depot bucket around to keep standing and balanced), and loved it, but we realized that not all parents would be able to ice skate and keep an eye on their kids, so we picked bowling (Curie calls it “balling”) and took the kids to try it out. The first time Curie had just woken from a nap and didn’t want to play (though she did want to play video games). Elia loved it (see her blog for her reaction, it is priceless). The second time Curie loved it so much she played four games straight. And as for the video games, we pulled out our Wii and have started playing Mario Kart again. Erin was happy.

As we posted earlier, Erin’s parents took us to Thomas Land, which was magical for the kids. While there she told Erin’s mom that she had made the scrambled eggs wrong because “my Daddy doesn’t make them like that,” and wouldn’t eat them (we stopped putting milk in scrambled eggs after reading a cooking blog, they do taste better that way). Curie has also started baking boxed cakes and brownies. She and Elia love mixing.

Our daily life is pretty busy and we feel run down all the time, but it is still amazing and heart-filling. The Chen Engineering company keeps making huge track layouts, Curie makes up names and words for things: pho and egg rolls are noodle-doodles with egamaroles, supersoup, and meatballmaballs. She calls tofu, “toh-food,” and most magnificently has named her Uncle Steve, “Weird Beard,” because of his beard. She only wants showers with Albert now and her bath toys have not been played with for some time – she likes showers because she doesn’t get water in her face when washing her hair (unlike Elia, who would put her face in the water as the first thing). Curie and Erin are the same in the no-water-in-the-face respect.

Albert has allowed Elsa because she is a queen and not a princess and works with Curie not to need to be saved as a princess, but recently having seen Frozen and Frozen Fever, we have introduced Mulan and Pocahontas whom she identified tremendously with because “we have the same hair!” So as a result we also introduced Lilo and Stitch, which we saw in its entirety.

Yes. Curie is growing up and almost four. Soon she will be out of pre-school and in kindergarten and we get emotional thinking about how proud we are that she is growing and emotional at how fast it is going. It means we need to relish and embrace every moment: the night of the Perseid meteor shower, Erin, Curie, and I lay on the front stoop while Elia was asleep upstairs and stared at the stars. And recently, Curie scratched her leg at school and pointed out her injury. Then she got her First Baby book (which we never filled out) and brought it to us. “Remember?” She asked. Albert was perplexed until Erin explained it to him: Albert had explained to Curie that the First Baby book was a scrapbook, but she had not understood and thought he had said “scratchbook” and had been wanting to catalog every scratch she had received. How wonderful is that? Now we have to get her a scratchbook so that she can do just that!

Curie July 2015. And kids keep growing whether you want them to or not. It is hard to believe Curie is almost four but she has begun asking to sleep in her own room though she has slept in the family bed almost all of her life. Now, she does ask Albert to sit in the hall so that she can see him and he does promise to wait until she sleeps before he does, but just the desire to sleep by herself is such a change for us. Curie is so eager to be a big girl that she wanted a shower the other day even though she hates showers. We are so proud that she is so proud of herself, how cool is that?

We have been responding to Curie’s changing sleep patterns (unlike Elia who has decided that she lives in the other hemisphere and has jet lag), and have made simple rules for sleeping when she said: “I don’t know how to sleep.” 1) Lay down. 2) Close your eyes. 3) Take deep breaths. 4) Go to sleep. And amazingly she will recite them to you and try to sleep – let’s say 40% of the time.

We have begun realizing the importance of individual time. Time spent exclusively with a kid, or time for a kid to exclusively spend time with a parent. There is bonding time here, time to build the “core memories” that we can’t waste. Albert spent time with the kids when they were sick because he was at home, but Erin has made a significant effort to take time off from work to spend with the kids, and that has been immeasurable in her relationship with Curie and Elia. In the end, Erin still gets more “I love you the best”s from Curie and is the one the kids want when things go wrong, but there is definitely a Daddy’s girl beginning – not that we are competing or anything (seriously, we are not competing, how wonderful is it to see your most precious in wonderment at the one you love?).

Curie had a scary staph infection over her eye earlier that we were lucky to catch at the urgent care and then the pediatrician. What was interesting was her reaction to the medicine. You may recall our traumatizing experience with penicillin earlier forcing her down to give her the medication. This time we started with her wailing and crying about the antibiotics, to bribing her, to cajoling, but one day while she was crying she took the medicine and we asked her “so if we just make you take it, it is all right?” And she said “yes” (boundaries?), then the next day she took it without crying, only saying she wished it wasn’t white, and then after she was more and more okay with it until she was proud she could take the medication. All of this in ten days, remarkable, isn’t it?

Curie still loves Elia going so far as to call Elia her best friend and one night while Elia was nursing Elia held onto Curie’s arm compelling Curie to say “it’s the first time she has done that!” This is not to say they don’t fight, don’t ever let blogs and social media rewrite history to be so rosy, Elia is of the age where the little car Curie loved fits her now, but Curie still loves her car and they often will have to decide who gets to ride it and who pushes (yes, Elia likes to push too, but not very far), fortunately Curie likes to push too. And when Elia wouldn’t listen to her while playing trains, she began taking apart the train set so that no one could play with it.

Curie has begun telling jokes and loves to ask Alexa, our Amazon Echo from Erin’s father, Jim to tell her a joke, or tell her the weather. Apologized to Erin one night about asking Erin not to sit next to her earlier in the day. She has new found manual dexterity to build block towers, Duplos, and train tracks. But  most importantly this month, she finally saw Frozen, no joke – we have let her see the “Let it go” video and part of the “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” song, but for a girl so obsessed with Elsa (Albert is okay with queens, but not helpless princesses), it is amazing that she has not seen the movie. You see, she had her own version of what happens, that was flawed. Something about using her powers to be get away from Anna and be alone (sort of true, but not really) because she would rather be alone. To disabuse her of the notion she got to see the whole thing with some chaperoning, and of course she loved it.

So Curie is growing up, but gratefully, she still wants her parents. She is opinionated and rambunctious, lively and wonderful: getting back to sleeping, Curie does still “miss Mommy” and goes back to the master bedroom from time to time to sleep with her and Elia. She does still want to play instead of sleep and (often provoked by Albert) will get out of control, but with the sleep rules reinforced, she will settle down, and sometimes when it is necessary,  Albert will put his hand on her back and tell her in no uncertain terms, “Curie, you are safe. You are loved,” and more often than not, moments later, she will be asleep.

Curie June 2015. Children are a source of strength. During times of anxiety or stress, it is easy to get paralyzed; this happened to Albert during racquetball a while ago (not because of the game). What got him through was “how would I want Curie or Elia to deal with things like this when they are older?” In that game, Albert beat his racquetball partner for the first time in two and a half years. So as much as we raise and take care of our kids, and as much as we have “aww” moments and moments of awe, family, and in our case kids too are truly a source of stability for us.

Curie grew a centimeter since we last measured her at three and a half and has begun actively wanting to learn to read. Books are more and more important to Curie and she will ask us to teach her to read; if we can’t at the moment, she will tell us the story by describing the pictures with her own interpretation, sometimes with very funny results.

Curie can identify about half of the alphabet on signs and on books – capital letters that is, and she can not only identify “C” “U” “R” “I” and “E” separately, but also write CURIE herself.  To help her guide where she writes, Albert drew boxes for each of the letters and when Erin told the teachers they now draw boxes or her as well. In addition to writing her name she likes to copy the names of her loved ones in boxes as well. If she comes across a letter in her name, she will say “hey they have a letter __ just like me!”

She is learning the real pronunciations of words that were cute in their mispronunciation, for instance,  she stopped saying “orangie” and now says “orange;” we are proud and wistful at the same time. She still says “lello” for “yellow” and at one point she stopped saying “bellela” saying “umbrella” properly for a while. When she has reverted back to “bellela,” we secretly, along with “lello” and a whole host of other cute mispronunciations, don’t want to correct her.

Like other kids her age, Curie likes to walk on top of walls and on curbs (usually holding our hand and making Elia want to do things that are quite advanced for her). She pretends to be a mother or a teacher or a scientist or a doctor. She competes with her best friends at school on who has the longest dress so that she can be the “mommy” for the day. In short, she is a healthy three year old, ready to turn four.

And then she does some precocious and funny things like saying “strange, Elia is not sleepy;” what three year old uses “strange,” to preface a sentence? She makes up full songs with rhymes, nothing sophisticated per se, but impressive nonetheless. She makes up games for us to play in the car, and asks us to “tell the story” when she overhears something she is interested in. She remembers when we last did something or where another thing happened.

There will come an age when she no longer wants to play trains on the floor or tea party with her parents anymore. There will be the day when she wants to be with her friends more than with us, and there will be the day she is ashamed we are her parents. These are all realities of raising children, so right now, when she wants to be with us the most: when she says, “who is going to look after me?” Remembers to be quiet when you are on the phone and kisses you cheek to remind you that she remembered; kisses Albert to say thank you for making dinner; stages shows to show us she can twirl, laughs hysterically with Elia and teaches her to jump; Curie goes out of her way to help Elia, and is sad when Elia doesn’t hug her – these are all simple little girl things that make this age so special – right now, it is worth being a little less ambitious, a little less successful, and a little less social, so that we can take in these moments and be with our children. As Curie declares when she gets us all together in a bed, “we are a Family!” And the world feels a little better for it.

Curie May 2015. Curie has been asking for us to teach her to read, and, most recently, asking us to teach her to write. Here is what we know so far: she can recognize most numbers and a good number of letters. She can pick out her name from a list of names. She can find letters she has learned in other words. She can copy letters in words and if you create structure like making boxes for the letters she can order them as well. Curie has never used the fist grip for a pencil or pen but has not yet realized that holding it closer to the tip will give her better control. She has us draw the letter with our finger to see how to write it. So, it is a start. and we could not be more proud.

In addition to learning to actually read and write, Curie loves to make cards and “writes” notes on them to people. She writes a scribble on every line on a credit card receipt or form (much like her cousin Miranda did at a similar age). On the reading front, books have become very important to her especially when she is on the potty, and when we can’t read to her we have encouraged her to read to us by describing the pictures in the book.

Her drawing has become more sophisticated as well. On our trip to California, Eleanor took time to teach Curie to draw flowers and other things, which may have sparked a new interest in drawing. Regardless, she likes drawing us with large circles as heads and bodies, she also likes drawing fish, and flowers. I am not sure what that means, but it is a joy to watch her draw. As a result, Elia loves to draw, as best as she can, as well. Curie takes her drawing seriously and calls it her “work.” Once, when we asked her stop and start again in the morning, she woke up and told us she had “work” to do and continued to draw.

The other big interest these days is a desire to work on puzzles. She has expressed an interest in the past, but she wanted us to do them then. These days she likes to do them herself and at Bernard’s house she worked on as many as she could over and over again. Agnes taught Curie how to play Candyland and Chutes and Ladders which she has also taken to. Curie, of course, idolizes her cousins and took to a large koi at the Cal State Long Beach Japanese Gardens named Bubble Gum because her cousins were enamored.

Curie’s vocabulary and diction have improved, to the point that you can have full-on, fairly sophisticated conversations with her. She will tell you things are “tremendous” and “awesome.” She interacts with the TV programs she watches now, particularly with “Little Einsteins,” which teaches kids about music, art, and dance, so she will tell us that “addagio” means slow, or she shows us an “arabesque” when she copies some ballet. She continues to give us her shows and loves big dresses to twirl around.

Because we only let her watch the music of Frozen, her interpretation of it is a little skewed, so we are considering letting her watch the whole thing so that she knows what actually happens. Right now, Elsa uses her magic “Frozen-powers” to keep everyone away so that she can be alone. She freezes Anna to keep her away. We wish Disney would stop killing parents as a theme in their films (along with glorifying princesses, but that is a different beast all together – Curie still does not identify as a Princess but as a Queen – we lost the King, but that is okay).

Finally, Curie has exhibited a really good heart before, notably with the sand toys at National Harbor, and she did so again with Mayar, the little girl from Saudi Arabia we mentioned in an earlier post. We see it most with her interactions with Elia; most recently, Elia has become much more interactive and Curie will share spontaneously with her. They have begun playing more and more together, but how we know that Curie really loves Elia? When they wake, Curie will want a hug from her sister; when they sleep Curie will cry if Elia ignores her; Curie asks to take pictures with Elia, and on planes, she asks to sit next to her and hold her. If Elia goes to one of us, Curie will ask Elia to come to her, and when Elia does touch her or hug her or kiss her, Curie will let us know. Elia is very loved by Curie, and Elia idolizes her big sister.

Curie April 2015. Curie has started saying “gesundheit” after someone sneezes and has begun talking about “responsibility” and “challenges;” her vocabulary has really taken off. Her self-proclaimed responsibilities include protecting Elia when bigger kids bother her, holding things when her parents’ hands are full, and wiping her boots on the front mat (something she makes us do ever since we bought it). Curie is also more considerate than either Albert or Erin and it is sometimes shocking how much we learn from her.At the gift shop, she insisted on buying Erin a cow candle and Albert a train (to share and eventually have for herself), instead of buying something for herself.

As Elia grows up and is more capable, Curie has enjoyed playing with her more, interacting more, and generally enjoying being the big sister. And besides the aforementioned protection for her little sister, Curie expresses more of a willingness to help Elia when she needs help.

Recently Curie has been trending toward longer dresses and things she can twirl in. She likes to play ballerina and Elsa/queen, but here is an interesting thing, she will say she likes princesses but because Albert has expressed that he does not like them as much, says that she is the queen instead. Same with Barbie, because Erin has expressed that she does not like Barbie, Curie will say “we don’t like Barbie right? Except the doctor one, right?”

When you ask her what she wants to do for her job, she takes the question very seriously and says “I want to clean up.” And because her favorite thing to pretend is to be the doctor, we ask “you don’t want to be a doctor?” She replies, I first need to clean and THEN I want to be a doctor.”

Curie has picked up hobbies as well including a rock collection (which takes some curating in that she needs to stick to smaller rocks), her figure/blind bag/box collections, drawing cards for grand parents, rolling Playdoh, and giving stage performances – dance, interpretive dance, and singing. At Cracker Barrel she insists on sitting in the rocking chairs and playing checkers – consisting of stacking the checker pieces and jumping checkers.

In addition to her Frozen obsession, Curie loves the big flashlight, and the LED magnifying glass. She loves being with her parents and loves to help when we do things, she says “I love helping, right?” And she loves to fix things, replace batteries, turn screws, and affix stickers. For being less whiny (on the blind bag scale) for a week she got an airplane by Battat which can be assembled and disassembled by an electric drill with bits. This is her favorite toy – we love that her favorite toy is an engineering toy so much that at Lucy’s party, rather than the Frozen and Disney princesses toys, this is what she wanted to give her.

So it goes without saying that in these challenging times, that our girls keep us going. On one particularly bad day, Albert was upstairs when Erin came home with the girls and Curie kept yelling for Albert who realized how much he would be missed if he weren’t there. From a self-worth standpoint, nothing is better than having your spouse and kids to remind you that health and family are really the important things.

Curie March 2015. Someone wrote recently that the things empty-nesters wish they had taken a picture of was the mundane things, like the dining table everyone ate at or the nightlight the kids used. The big trips and events were great, but to remember the little things was key. Jerry Seinfeld says you should write all the funny things your kids say in a book, because though you think you will remember it all, you don’t. And as these posts get longer and longer on each girl, we realize that there were so many things we should have written about Curie that we didn’t.

When Curie just started being mobile she would feel things for their texture, especially horizontal surfaces, and she would put her palms up against the edge and scratch at the surface with her finger tips learning what this new feeling was. This has been floating in Albert’s mind a lot recently because Elia is similarly discovering so many new things for the first time, and yet we didn’t write it down when Curie was growing up (or if we did, we have forgotten). You can’t write everything down, but this exercise of taking a picture every day makes us feel like we could do a better job remembering for when we are old and empty-nesters ourselves. Erin and I both have one or two pictures for entire years of some of our childhoods (our parents probably have many more in their houses) and it is the pictures that often determine how we remember what happened, that is why this picture-a-day has become so important to us.

Family is becoming much more important to Curie, there is a sense of not-all-being-there when we are not all together she feels. Albert tends to pass out on the couch instead of going to bed and recently Curie has been insisting that he come up to bed so that we can “all be a family.” Elia delights her where she will find ways to play with her, or want to hug her, or kiss her, or play with her feet, or wrestle (not the neck Curie) with her. She makes it a point to kiss Elia when giving kisses to us, and when we have Elia kiss us, she insists on one for herself.

We are making progress on whining and frustration, and the Olaf bag with blind bags has transformed into Easter eggs with figurines from Curie’s favorite shows. Now to be fair, Albert lets her open as many as she needs to to find the one she wants and then they close all the other ones back up and put them back in the bag for future openings. Perhaps not the original idea, but it works and gets her the one she is looking for. She has done some funny things with her figurines, with Captain Barnacle she insisted on holding him when watching Octonauts and held him up every time Captain Barnacle appeared. The next day she wanted Dashi and had Captain Barnacle kiss Dashi when she was bitten by a shark playing with Albert, we thought it was a cute romantic twist until she also got Peso (called “Queso”) and she had Captain Barnacle kiss him too – maybe it is progressive.

Curie loves Play Doh, and wants to play it (notice play it, not play with it) every day, she loves watching the nan and tortilla makers make bread at our local kabob and Mexican places and uses the full sized rolling pins on her Play Doh. At a recent children’s museum trip she started playing with regular sized Legos (technically the bigger ones are Duplos – which BTW Albert just discovered that they are compatible and you can put Legos on Duplos – it was mind blowing), and Elia went from the huge ones from Mega Blocks to Duplos.

Because it is spring it is hard to remember that the month started with a snow storm and right before, Albert had bought Curie a snow shovel. Curie LOVES to shovel snow and clean off the car – until that is, her glove comes off and her hand gets too cold. She also started out-growing her boots, so we took advantage of the return policy that you really shouldn’t do, and returned the boots at REI within the year and got her a larger size (first, for those of you looking down your nose, someone is going to get fantastic almost perfect boots for their kid at the next attic/garage sale, AND REI is getting free advertising for their fantastic return policy right now), but since they didn’t have her size in the boots she had, we swapped them up for some BOGs which both Albert and Erin wanted for themselves. BOGs have cut out handles that make it very easy to pull on, and are perfect. The thing is this, we got her first boots on sale for $32 which were $50 boots. The BOGS were on sale for $49 and we said, hey why not – but they are normally $74 dollars. So Curie is wearing essentially $80 boots ($78 at L.L. Bean). What kid gets $80 boots?

Elia and Curie are playing a lot more now. They will share a sippy cup and actually give it back to each other. The other thing is we are finally using our expensive tricycle which as you can see, has a tandem attachment. Normally Curie won’t ride a stroller or vehicle for longer than a couple of minutes before wanting to be carried, but this time they rode the whole way there and back. Something wonderful is happening.

At the end of the month Bernard visited, and generally, Albert’s family sees us less because of distance so it was a treat. For days Curie was excited that Uncle Bernard was visiting. She worked very hard on a card for him and harder on an envelope that had his name on it (as close as she could get with Erin’s instruction) she then decorated it with a ton of puffed letter stickers. The nicest thing was when Bernard read to Curie and then to Elia and it reminded us how important family is and not just your immediate family.

Curie February 2015. Who would have guessed that sitting in the dark listening to Curie laugh in her sleep would be something so heartwarming? This month we have made progress on self-control; we have also remembered that though we are tracking Elia’s milestones, Curie continues to develop at a remarkable pace surprising us with new things she learns almost every day.

Recently somebody told us  “if you can understand the currency your child believes in, and it changes all the time, then you are golden.” This is actually true for management as well from baby boomers to the millennial.  What this all is tantamount is teaching your children self-control through bribery. Really though we have been seeing that you need a constant mix in approach and frankly, we won’t be able to say whether any of it has worked until we are 80 (okay, Albert 80, Erin 68) to see if we did okay. Some parents use stars on a chart that the kids can cash in for prizes, others use the inverse and use time outs and the stick.

Curie is crying less, learning to be less whiny and controlling her feelings more – her currency was screen time, but recently instead of giving her blind bags when we felt like it, Curie now gets a blind bag if she has progressed and controlled herself the whole day – which means she might start to whine, but finds her self control along the way and stops. It has, at least for the couple of weeks, worked wonders. If she can go a whole week, she can get an Octonaut toy; lest you think we are just buying a lot of toys, she has not earned the Octonaut toy yet.

A new wrinkle in the “I’m not tired,” negotiations of not going to bed has been that she now will leave the bed and come downstairs to spend time with Albert watching what went from “your” to “our favorite car show (Top Gear).” When she is sufficiently tired, she will be back up and want “Mommy all to myself.”

The most effective changer, recently though, has been having Curie watch “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” which is based on Mr. Rogers for those of us a little older. Each episode has a lesson, but more importantly a little song that goes with the lesson like “if you have to go potty, stop and go right away, wash and flush and you are on your way!” This for instance has boosted Curie from almost potty trained to essentially potty trained (though for convenience we put her in pull-ups on weekends or when she goes to sleep). There are songs on jealousy, sharing, feeling frustrated – “if you start to get angry and you want to roar, take a deep breath and count to four,” The secret is the parents learn the songs too and give you common language to solve problems. Curie will sing them to us when she sees our behavior and can use them to identify when she is jealous, or angry, or needing to share, or needing to go potty.

With all the toys and games we have inherited, been gifted, or bought, we learned, during a warm weekend, that there is nothing like running in a field to Curie. She wanted us to race, to get picked up, twirled, did “123 jump,” helped Elia walk and as we mentioned earlier did “123 jump” with her. When she falls she tends to jump up and say “I’m okay!” The same goes with in the house with a clean space in the living room, or the mattress in her room, to twirl, dance, “do a show,” or just exercise with her yoga, her exercise, with dog and tree pose.

Curie is sensitive and caring, wanting to be “in the middle” between Albert and Erin when she can, likes to hold “my little sister,” discovered that she can pick Elia  up, played “fetch” with Elia (yeah, “catch” would have been better) with a ball. And Curie, one day, worried about Albert’s ear, met him at the stairs after he had returned from the minute clinic to give him a big hug because he said he had said needed it – “I need to give Daddy a big hug.”

We were late to the Frozen game, so “Let it go,” and “Do you want to build a snowman,” are just showing up, our biggest surprise was when she could sing the entire first verse of “The duck walks up,” having not heard it from us for almost half a year, by herself. And there are other little things -after more than a year after trying to get her to wear sunglasses, on the last day of Cancun, she decided it was time to wear them – for the day. She likes fixing things and replacing batteries; Albert bought her a shovel so she could help shoveling snow. All in all it is the simple things, and we tend to forget that.

Finally one thought, with kids, parents tend to be partners and forget to be married. The children have precedence in time, mind, and effort – and yet when you remember to fall in love regularly, you become less resentful, snipe and nag less, and remember to be considerate and thoughtful of each other’s feelings. You become Partners again with the capital “P” and remember that laughter is what brought you together and it is what will allow us to grow old together.

Curie January 2015. “Curie Becomes a ‘Threenager,'” or “Ginger Ale and Orange Juice.” Over the past few months we have commented that three has been harder than two (people say four gets easier, but having been fooled by the idea of the terrible twos, judgement is currently being withheld), and recently Erin discovered that someone has coined the term threenager. Rebellion, contrariness, drama, and whininess all come with parenting challenges.

At pre-school Curie has learned “you get what you get and you don’t get upset,” when it comes to selecting instruments for music class. We have begun using it at home and making the transference to even which parent picks her up or does things for her.

Curie is coming into stronger emotions and learning to cope with them. Everything is all or nothing in her eyes, something that Albert had issues with when he was the same age. Tantrums and crying to the point of coughing and hysteria are not uncommon and coping with them often means making sure we take the time not to just react. Reasoning with her but being firm about the boundaries have been the general order of the day, but you have to reason like a three-year old.

Erin has been doing a great job pre-wiring conversations like “when this show ends I am going to say turn it off, and you are going to say ‘yes mommy,'” which she does really well with. Albert will take her aside and keep talking to her in measured tones until she has cried it out. We tell her all the time that we don’t understand her when she whines and make her say it again until it is in her “big girl strong voice” and only say yes when she does. Albert will take it further and encourage her superhero voice or robot voice (okay usually it is Albert doing the superhero voice or robot voice, but it convey’s the idea that a strong voice is better for asking for things). All of this is of course coupled with a “please.” We do the same when she demands and work the other direction to a nice voice.

Now don’t get us wrong, it is not an exasperated pain (okay sometimes it is), but it is a daily occurrence that we want to work on more to rein in the entitled-ness, and hopefully not spoil her. Each parent has their own way of raising kids (and judging other parents along the way), and while everyone seems to have some sort of advice either from experience or thought, we are all just muddling through the best we can and what works for one kid may not work for another. What works one day, even, may not work the next.

The month was long for us, partly because we have never really shaken the illnesses of December and acquired new ones along the way, and partly because we were anticipating our Cancun vacation with the Hoaglands on January 31. Work seemed longer and harder, daily chores did not get done. Tempers and voices became brittle and taking the time each day to be a family and appreciate became more important though not always done. Twice Curie wanted us to take a family picture in bed (we do a lot as evidenced by the pictures) and wanting to be with “family all together” is something very important to her. She told Erin that she wanted a big family.

Snow in DC meant snow suits and indoor snowmen as Curie discovered she loved snow, but did not like cold. We went to the car show in DC (which was a little bit of a disappointment as we had hoped to see cool concept cars but instead was at a what felt like an indoor car lot with a lot of ordinary cars). The best part of the car show was when Curie took charge of one of the cameras and said “Daddy, you and me are ‘tographers,’ wight?” And proceeded to take the job very seriously getting angry at people getting into her shot. She learned to hold the camera away from her eye (she had been imitating Albert when he shoots his DSLR by holding the LCD to her face), and has taken some very nice pictures.

Curie is becoming a complex, opinionated, wonderful little girl (oops sorry, big girl). Curie’s favorite shows are Chuggington and Octonauts (thank you Emma) and recently Doc McStuffin, but is trying to convince us that the two verboten things Disney princesses and Barbies are good things (Albert and Erin respectively dislike these). She loves her hot dog without the bun, she likes to mix drinks together to see what colors, flavors, or sensations they make (orange juice and ginger ale are her favorite, but you have to pour the ginger ale first she says). She loves her family, especially her Mommy, her Daddy, and her Little Sister, which, of course, is all of us. When she told Erin she wanted a big family she said: I want four Mommys, four Daddys, four Elias, four Poppops, four Julies, and four Grandmoms… you get the idea. All this to say in yet a different way, parenting is hard, but parenting is wonderful all the same.