Category: Curie

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.