Category: Elia

So with Curie taking the bus to kindergarten our routine has changed and the new normal is taking some time to get used to; each parent has to now pick up a different child from a different school with Albert picking up Elia from day care, and Erin picking up Curie from after school care at martial arts.

The silver lining to this is that each parent how has some more alone time with a child and it is evident that the children love the attention and focus. In the car, Elia, whose favorite song recently (and like her sister before her) has been “Wheels on the Bus!” Elia delighted when Albert changed the words to “Wheels on the Car!” and used the actual windows and windshield wipers (and horn) to sing to the song and of course she loved: Elia in the car says “ha ha ha!”

Elia has been saying more sophisticated sentences like: “dat car like us!” meaning “that car looks like ours!” And “my lock red,” meaning “my door is unlocked.” Even more, she has found that she can use her toes to unlock the door if she takes off her shoes and makes Albert re-lock it manually (because the electronic lock is broken). She also loves to share pretzels with Albert insisting he eat one if she does. Now Erin and Curie are also spending more time together which has meant three sugar cookies from “old MacDonald’s” after her martial arts class and singing the songs she learned from Ms. Best at kindergarten in the car.

Both kids are having adjustment issues with Elia hitting recently and pulling hair. She knows she can’t ride the school bus and misses her “Jie-jie” in the car. This is not to say that she has become a terror, but she is definitely pushing boundaries and testing what is acceptable and not. We have recounted her wanting Minnie to be buckled in the car and her learning to go to school on her own, it is two weeks still so it is early days yet.

Elia has had trouble understanding birthdays as well. She knows that Curie had a “big” birthday and got a lot of presents and attention. We gave Elia some small presents for her “little” birthday which she liked, but the very next day she said that it was her “big”birthday now. Fairness is a critical thing at this age, but fair in the kids minds, not the adults. Elia also tells Albert that after her birthday it is Albert’s which is totally true.

Besides the Rey costume, Elia has asked for Captain America shirt which we bought but did not make the collage, we will post it separately. It has a hood built in, very cute. She also has a mad face now; it is not her real mad face, it is another pose she has. She has her pose, the cute one, a super hero pose, her Elia freezing pose, and her mad pose (the one in the picture).

Elia is still fearless and can climb ladders on jungle gyms by herself (something Curie won’t do yet) and giving us heart attacks. She recovered quickly from a fall with Erin recently, and likes to jump down two stairs (and considers three) at a time.

Because of her time with Albert in the car, she has begun sleeping with him again. She will go up with Erin but cry for Albert some times and they will go to the guest room to sleep through the night. It also helps Albert in that he can’t binge watch Netflix or Amazon and midnight snack. There is something wonderful that Elia and Curie can tell when you move away from them when they are asleep; they will call to you in their sleep and quiet down when they feel you near them again.

August was our family vacation to Toronto and Niagara falls. We were originally going to Japan with our friends the Hoaglands, but with the house not yet rented we didn’t feel comfortable spending so much money. We ended up going to  Toronto and Niagara for a fifth the price.

Elia’s diction and vocabulary have really taken off this month. She no longer is measured in her speech when she makes sentences and has begun talking a lot. She is still working on learning new things but it is cute as all get out.

She uses “me” for “I,” so “me no no dat is,” is “I don’t know what that is.” Or simply Me no no,” “I don’t know.” Better yet, “What dat? … Me no no.” We love how she calls things at: the moment: “Um nom noms,” are M&Ms, “wipers” for “wipes.” Sometimes she runs around just saying “blah, blah, blah.” But she is pretty articulate when she wants to be, it is her syntax that cracks us up: “Me get another one book.” or  “Me eat another one bite.” “Dat too tary (scary).” “Me love Hi fi (Hi5).”

Then there are really cute ones like: “Me strong like Rey. Me strong like Rey and Finn,” or “Dada pay me, pay ball.” We introduced the kids to several versions of Cinderella this month with Elia entranced by the ball scenes. She LOVES the “Slippery and Rose” movie (The Slipper and the Rose), and Ever After. The best is that she calls Cinderella “Fa la le la” or just “La le la.” She has however started to say “lello” instead of “yellow,” and that might be a Curie influence as she says “lello.”

We’ll leave many of the Toronto, Niagara Falls exploits to that blog post, but there were a few things for Elia of note. She remembers the name of her pony “Merlin (her first),” knows that the ferris wheel was “too tary” for her, that the bears made her dizzy because Albert spun them “too fast.” It is better to just watch her description on the video. We bought her a plastic boat (jet ski) and she asked to roll the window down. Curie said she dropped the boat out the side, which we thought she meant on the side of her car seat, but Elia had thrown her boat out the window. Albert rescued it from the road, fortunately we were at the parking lot of the hotel. And then, Elia didn’t want to climb up the CN tower, until we explained it was only taking the elevator up and not actually climbing the outside, she said then said “okay.”

Elia had her first hair cut the same day Curie did and though she did not need holding hands, she did not smile until it was over. Instead of watching the video of Peppa Pig, she looked at the mirror to see what the stylist was doing.

So Elia is quite head strong, pushing bigger kids out of the way on the slide, she is willful too, having definite opinions (though many are either contrary or the same as Curie’s). She has begun hitting and spitting recently which initially Albert just rasberried back into Elia’s face, Erin thought Elia’s surprised reaction was hilarious, but we are working on a better way of handling her acting up than just reacting. Elia loves to make scrambled eggs cracking and mixing the eggs. The only thing she doesn’t do is actually cook them. She is still the daredevil, loving being lifted, and loved when Albert would drop a ball over her head only to catch it right before hitting her as she lay down.

Elia really wants the company and attention and will insist you sit next to her or near her, or she will sidle up to you or sit in your lap. She always wants “mouk” at the end of the day, but will insist on “mouk on the couch.” In the morning she wants to go “downtairs!” Insistently, right when she wakes up. She knows how to count,  sort of, and can tell you what the animals are and what sounds they make. She was playing with the animals and farm and kept saying “dis be?” Which we thought it meant “what is this?” Which we thought was surprising since she can tell you what the animals are, but we realized she meant “where do these go?” And then true to her nature (OCD inherited from Albert) she put them in the same places over and over again. Albert’s favorite Elia noise? “Onk onk.”

 

So we have been using Waze lately instead of Google Maps (maps has a better interface, but the crowd sourcing in Waze seems to give better directions). For a while we had T-Pain as our voice and the kids loved it, In fact, Curie would request putting the “new GPS” on. For those of you who do not know, T-Pain is an autotuned rapper who sings the directions: “I’m T-Pain, you gonna see, Ima gonna get you from A to Z.” So we would sing along to his directions and unconsciously sing it around the kids. Recently Elia had a great reaction, After Albert sang the “I’m T-pain…” part, Elia protested and said, “me T-Pain, you bad guys”

Another day, Erin had taken Elia into the bathroom at a restaurant and Elia spied a Windex bottle. She asked Erin “wat dat for?” Erin responded that it was for cleaning mirrors. Without missing a beat, Elia asked, “na spray mama face?”

The kids love to play frozen powers and heat queen to freeze and unfreeze. In the car, Curie was talking about frozen powers to which Elia said that she had “Star Wars Frozen powers,” which we can only imagine what that would be like. Speaking of Star Wars, Elia loves the Force Awakens and anything Star Wars. There is a giant First Order Storm Trooper that Elia loves to push its button as we mentioned before; most recently though she will go up to it, call it her friend, and hold its hand. We have a blue and green light saber at home (not real ones of course, that would be dangerous) and Elia has taken to fighting with them. Now, you really do need to defend yourself, because Elia goes all out and goes for your head and your face and swings really hard. She will walk up to you with both light sabers and hand you the green one (the blue one is Rey’s so it is hers), then once activated she will go at you at will. Steve was game for this kind of fight so played with her and would fall once hit. Elia liked this so much that she also wanted to fall melodramatically and drop her light saber; so her fight became one touch of the light saber against her opponent’s and then a melodramatic pretend-fall coming to rest on the floor.

The second time in the pool this summer Elia still liked jumping into the pool but at one point pushed Albert away seeing that most other kids were swimming by themselves; she did not want anyone to hold her as she swam with her floaties.  Because she did it first, it pushed Curie into jumping into the pool and swimming by herself. We’ll send them to swim class this summer.

Elia has been saying all sorts of funny things like “me baby” then after a pause “cute.” When she had a diaper rash she walked bow-legged and said “my butt hurts.” Which sound funny because Curie always said “bum” instead of “butt.” It is like hearing baby sailor talk. When playing with Albert once, Elia raised one finger to indicate that there was only on blind box left on her show. Albert raised his finger too and she laughed. Then she said it was her “thumb,” to which Albert corrected, “no, no, that is your finger, this is your thumb,” raising his thumb. Then she couldn’t copy it until Albert held her thumb and she closed her fist. Albert wiggled his thumb and she laughed hysterically. The next day, Curie and Elia were in the car, and after a period of quiet, Elia spoke up “Mommy, thumb!” Holding a thumbs up and very proud of herself. Right now if you ask her where is her thumb she will look at her hand for a while and then make the thumbs up sign.

Erin was away on a trip at the end of Elia’s month (ending on the 15th) which meant that Albert had the kids. Curie had a fever which Albert caught. So sick single parenting the kids ran a little bit wild. Albert fed them sugar-free Reese’s peanut butter cups and sugar free Squirt. But the saddest part was when Elia missed Erin and found her nursing cover. It must smell like milk and Mommy, because Elia held it crying and used it as a blanket crying herself to sleep.

In fairly stressful times it is always nice to know that if you sit with you child for a while and appreciate the moment, that you will forget the outside for just a moment and live in the bubble with your child.

Elia continues to blossom and is finding her identity in the family. She is territorial about her food like Dylan was but still wants the same things that Curie wants. She loves watching “eggs,” and wants to pick what we watch first “me pick!” And will even cry if she is not given the chance.

She is adorable and funny, almost not realizing she is funny. We asked the kids who has the best sister? Elia said “Jie-jie’s best sister” which could be interpreted as I think Ji-jie has the best sister, me, or Jie-jie is the best sister, either way, very cute. Continue reading “Elia June 2016”