Category: Curie

Back in November, we wrote about Curie being the youngest in her class (and school) and that Bright Horizons in Skyline had not prepared her as well for kindergarten in Fairfax as it could have. Mrs. Best reassured Albert that Curie would be fine. Well, Mrs. Best called Erin yesterday to tell us that on Curie’s developmental reading test that Curie scored a 187/193, a huge jump from her score of 90 when she started. We are so proud of her. Note, this follows countless hours of parental worry, diligence from Mrs. Best and Mrs. Campbell and hard work on everyone’s part, especially Curie’s!

We are grateful to Curie’s teachers and proud of Curie’s hard work. We made a cake to celebrate, but the cake mix was expired, so Albert went out late at night to get another one so that Curie could have her cake.

Cure has taken to her Tsum tsum dress as much as Elia with her Belle dress. It is flattering on her, and lets her twirl, but we suspect there is more. It is red and reminds her of Wonder Woman, and oddly she has made it a point to say that it isn’t fair that Elia gets to be Belle all of the time (we have not bought a Belle dress for Curie yet, but we might just to make it fair).

We have seen Beauty and the Beast four times in the theater now. This most recent time, we had to sit in seats apart (amazing that the movie can be almost full right before it will release for purchase). Curie wanted to sit with Albert and the two of them had a little daddy and daughter date. When we left she was intent on telling Albert that he is her prince – the same way Elia says it to her and when Elia said “You are my Beast.”

This month too Erin took Curie to two field trips, one to the National Zoo, to which Albert met the with Elia. The whole district went and while the kids had blue t-shirts, so did their entire school. One of Curie’s classmates was good and listened, but the other two kept wandering off. Curie was hungry when we arrived and insisted on seeing the ponies first, as her parents we did it. There was only two hours, which was really not enough to do very much. Erin also chaperoned the trip to the Natural History Museum which was easier, with just the kindergarteners going and Erin’s group being much smaller.

We spent time on Burke Lake, with Curie and Albert in one boat and Erin and Elia in another. Curie did seem to get a little bored by the end, but she really wanted to row even though we had a motor. In the end we blew bubbles and had a nice time. Along the same lines, we went to Huntley meadows and saw the animals, with Elia and Curie each finding a snake, and both pretending the tower was a castle. This was the month we had live crawfish and the kids picked out all the dead ones before boiling them. We staycationed at the Sheraton, and somehow got Susie and Isabella to come along Curie’s friend Etta even came to swim! We went to Curie’s schools entertainment day, saw Bella’s play and much more. At the end of the month Albert went to Cambridge to attend a certificate program at Harvard and Erin’s mother came down to take care of everyone.

In the middle of the month we noted that Curie has been turning to crying again when things don’t go her way and we could see that it was correlated with needing more sleep and eating better. More to the end of the month though she seems to be better about it, hopefully that means she is getting more sleep and eating better.

Curie has been getting more and more thoughtful. She has always been a sensitive, conscious girl, but recently she has taken to offering massages when we say we are tired. Of course this also means she wants one too and loves to get her back rubbed saying “ah, what a nice massage.” With reading she has begun reading to Elia, especially reading Green Eggs and Ham to Elia (which they have both memorized). Curie is growing up but she is still a little girl in many ways, playing with dolls, wanting to have playdates with us, and being unable to say “ravioli (raviloli)” and laughing about it.

Curie is a joy, a wonderful big sister, a great student, friend and daughter. We are proud not just because we are parents, but because in many ways we can look up to her and let our child remind us as a role model for appreciating life.

We are staycationing again at the Tysons Sheraton, the kids are asleep, which gives us time to write on a weekend. It is almost as if we are always in recovery mode, catching up on sleep, trying to get healthy, recovering from stress, work, anxiety and exhaustion. Albert has been working on “disdain” lately: remembering that everyone has their own story and concerns and trying not to judge so quickly, nor so harshly. After all with all the work, anxiety, exhaustion, and stress, why add anger and frustration to the mix.

We recently read that searching for meaning is more important than searching for happiness and though some people would disagree, parenting holds a lot of meaning for us. In twenty years we will have to rediscover individual meaning, but it is such a short period of time that you have your kids that we happily accept these moments and this meaning.

Curie has been learning to read, and it has been remarkable as she does. With sight words, she largely memorizes right now, not yet sounding her words out, but she is moving along and her teacher guides the students well on their individual paths. Reading has become a bigger part of our lives too with Curie bringing three books a day from school to read at night, a library book, a comprehension book, and a sight reading book. Elia has wanted to read her books too, leading to all of us reading in bed before sleep. It is a nice regular thing we do now.

With our Ottawa trip for Erin’s conference, the kids were great and we had a good time hanging out with the cousins and at the hotel. Amazingly there was snow on the way up to Canada. We stopped in Syracuse on the way up and down. The kids love hotpot and we had a chance to have all you can eat Little Sheep Hotpot in the newly remodeled Ottawa location. On our return, we found out that ours will start all you can eat on Tuesdays. Curie loves fish cake and we ordered a lot of it and introduced it to Livi and Emi. The kids also loved to drive the cousins’ powered car with our finding out that neither Elia nor Curie can steer straight yet. Another thing to happily work on.

As mentioned in Elia’s blog, both kids were so well behaved and we rewarded them with a present. They wanted Belle dolls (Albert and the girls saw the movie with Taylor and the cousins again) at first but after a trip to Walmart, Curie wanted a Wonder Woman movie doll. When it came time to buy them, Curie chose Wonder Woman’s mother and her horse, likely because she looks like She-ra, which Curie has been watching, and Elia chose her yellow Belle dress.

Our crawfish day was fantastic with both kids fearless and Curie, a crawfish connoisseur, learning how to shell her own crawfish, though at some point because she is just beginning resorted to asking us to peel them for her. Elia was hesitant, but both kids love crawfish now.

Curie continues to mature and will behave simply to be in contrast to Elia when Elia is frustrated. She works on getting her emotions under control and we talk about how big her problem is, and remind her, not that she is the big sister, but that she is Elia’s protector and is Elia’s hero, which works a lot better.

She is a five year old and when we play she tells us what to pretend. “Pretend you are Shining Armor, and pretend you say you are hungry,” or something like that. She determines how you will play rather than just playing. But she needs time with us, some part wanting single parent time, some part reacting to attention to Elia, but quality time for each child has become important. Curie still makes it a point to take care of Elia, giving her toys when she is not tired and remembers to “be beautiful,” but she is particular about whether or not it is fair. Curie is tired a lot, not eating enough, not eating enough of the right things, and with no nap and martial arts after school, she is tired each morning.

She is still a five year old; when we went to the turf at National Harbor, she made it a point to dance all around the space. She is drawn to little children and loves to hold their hands and dance and wants to take care of them. When we went to Pinstripes for Easter, she loved to play bocce and spend time, but when a baby came by she would cock her head and say “aww.” She still loves to pretend to tap dance and will tell us how to do it. We love all spontaneously tapping in elevators. Something we forget to write about. When she eats she loves to ask us to feel her tummy to see if she is full. We tell her if she can still fit more and she will eat a bit more. She does take small bites though.

Curie loves best to wake up with both parents in bed, she still loves to be in the middle of both of us which is a challenge with four of us and Elia also wants to be in the middle. But you can see Curie’s pleasure when she wakes next to us or has time to be with us either alone or both of us. Curie grinds her teeth when she sleeps, and we have found that when Albert gets back into bed with them that she stops grinding, leading us to suspect that she find comfort that we are next to her even as she sleeps.

February begins with Erin’s birthday, followed by Valentine’s Day and while we do celebrate birthdays, we have historically not celebrated Valentine’s Day because of it’s Hallmark overtones (we celebrate Bastille Day instead – a joke). With the girls getting older though Albert took it upon them to pick out presents for Erin and pick out flowers for her as well. The kids were so excited about the birthday and Valentines. Along with 1 800 Flowers’s mishaps we ended up with two dozen roses for Erin’s birthday, and four dozen roses for Erin and the girls for Valentine’s day.

The girls are totally into dresses now. Not too long ago, Albert went to Target and bought many character dresses when they had their post holiday clearance and so now the weekends are character dresses. Curie’s favorites for school are a black Minnie gown and a purple Shopkins gown and the Elsa dress at home.

She loves to sing to the Moana soundtrack and play with her sister. We have seen her learn lyrics to songs that we only just hear and revisit songs like the Duck Song that she once new but now forgot she knew. It is interesting to see what she does not remember from the past five years. Curie and Elia love to play mommy and baby together and often we will hear Elia call for “Mommy” only to find that she is calling for Curie as Mommy.

We found out that she loves bunnies, something we didn’t know ourselves but she said one day that she does love them. She also is very much into her drawing taking the time to draw members of the family. Kindergarten has improved her art skills immensely and she makes it a point to make us pose for our portraits, which take a few minutes to draw. She works on her martial arts working to get her black tip which will allow her to get to the next belt level, and she chose not to swim at our staycation because of how cold it is to get out of the pool (Albert dunked her as a baby which probably has something to do with it).

We have had play dates with pre-school friends and kindergarten friends, sometimes going to dinner, like we did with Etta and her father, having Natalie over, or running into Isabella at Flight (where Elia had had Robbie from Skyline. Like all kids, when she is tired though she can become irritated and we have been working with her to take care of her guests. In general we have been working on frustration and crying when she doesn’t get what she wants. Albert has been working on asking what the size of the problem is, and Curie responds by putting her hand above or below her head and telling us if it is a small problem or a big problem. Partly because of the novelty and partly because it gives her some control it works most of the time curtailing the crying almost immediately and refocusing her. Parenting continues to be a lot of learning and adapting, and we are always feeling like people are doing it better than we are, but we realize we can just do the best we can and make the effort not to miss each day and each moment.