Category: Elia

So Elia kind of exploded this month, she went from single word diction to two word sentences; Elia started to string words together on December 4th: “Dada, up,” “hi Da,” “off mine,” “bye Da.” Then on December 7th, started chaining three words: “mine, shoes, on.”

She now calls herself “Yeh-yeh” for Elia, and will call herself “me” on occasion – a sophisticated turn of events. Another sophisticated change: she asked “why” for the first time when I said we needed to change a light bulb. At the beginning of the month, all colors were “yellow,” but now she says “blue,” and “purple” (and “yellow” has become “wellow”). She loves to pull a pillow up onto her chest and say “night!” As if it is a blanket. And over Thanksgiving, she learned to count with her Ah-ma, Albert’s mother; if you say “one,”  she’ll say “tu!” Then on December 8th she said three, though it sounded more like “door,” but it follows one and two each time.

And the vocabulary keeps coming. With Curie we wrote down every word, but Elia keeps saying new things that we can’t keep up. One of the car games we play to limit screen time is to see what word Elia will say if you say it (an Elia claps for herself after every word). Curie loves it, and so Elia will repeat many words that she is just learning, but she is definitely making the association.She picked up a noodle and said “noodo,” and now when we ask her what she wants to eat, she says “noodo,” or “rice.” When she is hungry she says “eat,” when she wants to take a bath she says “bath” and starts to take off her clothes. She holds the camera and says “cheese,” and sits on her bike and says “bike.” In the morning if you say “good morning,” she will say “morning.”

She loves buses, and will say “bus” when a bus, van, or train comes by, and then follow it with “mine,” meaning that she loves them we think, or she actually believes they are hers. When she sees a train, she pumps one fist in the air and yells “tu-tu!” At school, she apparently says “not nice,” when something happens that is not in her favor. We hadn’t heard it at home, so it goes to show that there are things that she doesn’t like at school and is expressing herself – in fact the teacher said that she says it all the time. Now, Julie says that Elia is ahead of the other kids at school, and Elia does sit more quietly and behave; Erin saw this at the Thanksgiving lunch where Elia was the only one not knocking over her milk and plate.

Our favorite game is in the car recently. Albert will say “are we there yet?” And Curie and Elia will yell “No!” Every time. Even when we are not in the car, if you ask “are we there yet?” They will yell “no!” It makes for great pictures. If you receive our Holiday Card, that is how we got her to yell in Santa hat picture. She talks on the phone and calls Poppop, Erin’s dad by finding his picture on the phone and pushing it. She will say “hi papa,” answer yes and no questions, then say “bye, papa.” Erin’s dad has been a trooper taking the calls.

And it is not just her vocal development. She loves to dance, copies somersaulting from Curie, and loves to clean up after everyone after dinner, and wants Albert to toss her in the air and help her do flips.  She started scooping rice with her chopsticks at HotSPot, didn’t need to nurse on the plane, and loves to peel oranges (clementines). She is also not as afraid of “Speck,” the Hoaglands’ great dane as much as she used to be. She is more opinionated and will want to choose her food and will say “no,” when you suggest something she doesn’t want to do. Oh and she wants to wipe her own bum too.

Last month we reported that Elia’s favorite film was “Feast.” the other day Elia put took her bowl from the table and wanted to eat on the floor like the Winston in the movie. She pretends to be a dog and Curie pretends to be a cat.

Elia is the youngest cousin on Albert’s side of the family, and Erin’s sister has not had any children yet which means that the closest in age on Albert’s side is 8 years, and a minimum of 4 years on Erin’s side we estimate; so she is a bit in no man’s land for people to play with. Erin does have a cousin whose youngest is a year older than Elia, but the last time they met, that cousin took toys away from Elia and uncharacteristically pushed her down (admittedly this was when Elia was a one year old and could probably hold her own better now). Her parents said that the cousin normally doesn’t have kids smaller than her so it was an interesting circumstance.

Another thing happening is that Curie received a lot of gifts and toys that have become shared toys in the house. Elia has a slide, a bike, a car, etc…. and she does not hesitate to claim things as hers. But there are few things bought just for her. She has become aware of equality in gifts too, not in value yet, but in what she receives she was aware that Albert bought Curie a clippy doll and Elia the dried strawberries she loves, and while Albert was getting things that each loved, Elia was very aware that she did not receive a clippy doll (that had to be rectified later). So Curie got a play kitchen from IKEA when she was one, and a guitar when she was two. Elia did not get an iconic gift at one in the same way and we did not really know what to get her for her second birthday coming up. Then at Thanksgiving we were visiting Ed and Suephy’s house who were hosting this year and Curie fell in love with a rocking horse that while a little pricey, is totally worth it to see the joy in her face as she rode it. Since then, she has tried to ride the little white horse stuffed animal (smushing it, but undeterred she continued to ride it), and will point out horses in videos and stores when she gets a chance. So yes, we have a daughter who wants a pony.

Albert gets the winter blues because while people are taking the time to remember to be kind and caring, he wishes that it doesn’t take a holiday to make us remember. Another friend has the blues because trying to be thoughtful to everyone is like having everyone’s birthday on the same day and it is hard. We have tried to ask our friends and family to focus less on gifts and more on the spirit of the holidays. We are trying to move away from the commercialism, being caught by the obligation to buy to let people know they are important to us, paying much more for rush shipping to hit this arbitrarily magical day, we want to teach the values of kindness and caring year round, but we want the holidays to be so magical also. Curie is very much into Santa Claus and while this is an Elia blog, we want to share what we told both of them about Santa. Before we were married and before we had kids, we talked about whether we wanted our kids to believe in Santa, and the same concern applied: we didn’t want it to be about gifts, but we did want the magic to be there. So we decided this: Santa (person or concept) needs help to get to everyone because there are so many people, and because there are people who are not as fortunate as others, we (parents and kids) have to help Santa get the gifts and spread the holiday spirit. The other day we explained this to Curie, and you know what? She wanted to help Santa get gifts for our friends and more importantly said that she wanted to help Santa get the rocking horse for Elia’s birthday. Curie is more excited to give Elia the rocking horse than we are, and almost as much as Elia will be when she gets it. Most of the things you presuppose when you don’t have kids yet fall to the wayside when you do, but sometimes it works the way you planned. Happy Holidays.

What a remarkable thing to have your youngest daughter begin to have conversations with you. Elia will respond to questions and ask for things. An example might be when Curie asks to watch something and Elia will chime up with “mine!” meaning “how about me? Where is mine?” We respond with, “Elia would you like to watch too?” to which she says “yes.” “Would you like to watch Harry the Bunny?” She replies “Baby!” meaning “Babies (the French documentary which is her favorite movie – it was Curie’s too at a similar age),” or “Roh roh,” meaning “Feast” or “Ret Roh!” Meaning “Frozen.” She says “yea,'” “What do you say? Say ‘please,'” “P’eas.” “Okay, here you go, say ‘thank you,'” and she says “tu-tu.”

She says “mama” for “Ah-ma,” her maternal grandmother, and when Ah-ma says “do you know I love you?” Elia says, “yes.” She can say “Pa-pa” for “Pop-pop,” and “Anma” for “Grandmom.” She can repeat any word you say, she was yelling “cannonball!” when jumping into her playpen from the bed because Curie was yelling “cannonball!” while doing the same. We play a game in the car called “make Elia say a word,” where you say a word to try to get Elia to repeat it. Her vocabulary is approaching 50 we think.

Her conversation and communication has grown more sophisticated and specific as well. She will go up to Curie and make deliberate eye contact and ask her to do things “ji-ji, jump.” Or she will walk up to Curie and hold out her hand to hold hands when we ask them to while walking. She identifies the little blue push car as hers and the tricycle as Curie’s. When Albert got up at one point to get something, she held her hand out to catch him and push him back down and said “Da, no.” She is attached to Dada lately (Curie went through this phase too, Curie would stand at the top of the stairs and yell “A-Da!” For Albert, just as Erin would) and calls for “Da-da” a lot or will look at Erin and as “Da-da?” To ask where he is.

She is a daredevil still with no fear of any slide. While in California, she would slide down the steepest slides even when other older kids wouldn’t. And after coming down the scary slide she would have a scared look on her face and then ask for “mo” to do it again. Her favorite thing to do on the playground though is to climb up and down the stairs and walk across the bridges and shaky parts independently. We would follow her around the playground to spot her but she just wanted to walk up and down the stairs on her own.

As we said, for Halloween she was dressed up as Elsa like Curie and we would tell people that she was dressed up as Curie. Albert has taken to dressing them up in the same outfits which is something he was not going to do before we had kids. Elia uses more sign language than Curie did because her language development is more normal but because it is more normal, she is starting to act up a bit more as she enters the ‘terrible twos,” a time where kids get frustrated at not being able to communicate yet. Still it is pretty cute, she throws her tantrums flinging herself prostrate on the floor. She blows bubbles into her drink even though she is not supposed to because it is fun. If she doesn’t like a food or drink she has tried, she will just open her mouth and let the food slowly fall from it. She continues to take one bite of each thing and puts it back. She will push Curie down the slide at home if Curie sits too long at the top of the slide with her hands or her head, and she has to be warned not to try to climb up the slide and go around time and again as she tests her boundaries.

At 20 months she has learned to jump to get some air and then land on her butt. She learned to do this on the trampoline but will do it on a bed, or a couch, or a floor with equal abandon. And because Curie has started jumping off stairs Elia does as well – okay one stair but still scary for he parents. Both Curie and Elia like to sit on top of our couch which has a high back and fling themselves off to land on the seats. It was very scary at first, but it is now commonplace for them to do. When Elia would land Erin would make some remark of concern and she would cover her mouth with both hands and laugh rocking back and forth. This was so cute we had to make a video of it.

We should have taken more video and need to take more video. We do a good job documenting our children’s lives through photographs and entries (though we need to go back and write more for Curie’s early ones), but when we unearth a video from even a few months ago, we are reminded of the joy in the timber of their voice and the reactions in the split seconds as they encounter new things. We have a clip or two from here or there (and we know we have lost more than a few), but we need to do a better job capturing some of these memories, or soon all we will have are pictures and unreliable memories to go with them. All of this is because we know that when you have kids, it isn’t so much the beginning of family, but a twenty-year block that you get them, and then they become their own people and have their own families and after that you are alone with each other again and all you have are appropriate, and hopefully often, phone calls and visits, your memories captured in whatever way you did and however you saved them, and, of course, the love in your hearts.

By the time Curie was 22 months, we were already pregnant with Elia. There is not another bun in the oven and that does make us a little sad. It is with that eye that we watch Elia’s growth with that much more sense of holding on.

They say that when kids hit 50 words, their speech explodes. Elia is just at the cusp of this and will repeat almost any word you say to her almost as if she is trying it out. And every new word she learns is an achievement that she indoctrinates with hand clapping and repetition. Just the other day she learned “yellow,” not “lellow” like Curie says, but fully articulated yellow and could identify it as a color. Her face completely lit up and when she knew she had it right and immediately identified a yellow car parked near by. We gave a few more colors, “blue” and “purple,” but these she just repeated without the same depth of understanding.

Curie was speaking at this point, so when we interact with Elia, it is different; there is an amazing and heartwarming mix of non-verbal and verbal communication, somehow more intimate, that makes Elia even more remarkable and cute.

She loves to identify “Jie-jie,” “Mama,” and “Dada,” and when you ask her she will point to them and will point to herself when you ask her to identify “Elia.” Her favorite word is still “My! My!”meaning mine and repeated like the seagulls in Finding Nemo. “Thu-thu,” thank you, “bubbo,” bubble, “mo,” more, “mo-mo” milk. Says “neigh” for horses, “mao” for cats, and “cack” for what ducks say.

Elia knows when we give Curie something first and we have to work on not making her feel like a second class citizen. When we give Curie an iPad, Elia will chime up and say “mine? Mine?” until we give her her own. She asks for “wuff-wuff,” the Disney short Feast, or “Ah-ah,” for Anna or Elsa for Frozen, and asks for “Moue” (the same way Curie used to say it) the most, Mickey Mouse (she can do the little games in the Mickey Mouse Road Rally game). Her favorite show though is Harry the Bunny, which is a little sensory show a couple minutes long that ends with “bye-bye Harry the Bunny, bye-bye funny bunnies,” where Harry waves. Elia waves with him and will run to the TV to point at the icon to play him. Her other favorite show is Play with Me Sesame, which she calls “E-mo,” for Elmo. She will follow Ernie’s instructions looking up and down or raising her thumbs, and she loves clapping along with Grover.

Elia’s “yesh” for yes, has transformed into a “yawp” for yup recently which is accompanied with her single head nod. She understands so much more than before, she loves to clean and will take your plate away from you to put in the sink even if you are not done eating yet. If you tell her to throw something away, she will put it in the garbage. Her OCD makes her ask for napkins every few minutes to clean her hands as she eats, but it does not compel her to use her fork or spoon necessarily. When Erin went on a trip she cried inconsolably, but when we told her “Mama is on a trip,” and she replied “ohh!” as if it was a new thing to comprehend. She understands talking on the phone now instead of someone in or behind the phone.

Elia continues to be fearless, standing on chairs and lowering herself off of high places. She loves to ride on our backs and shoulders, Mama, Papa, and Curie too (well not on Curie’s shoulders). She is fearless on even the tallest slides, and wants to go wherever Curie goes. She IS afraid of dogs though, even though at the same time she will go out of her way to see them. She has been walking into doors and falling a lot recently. She fell off the bed, off a slide, off a chair, the little mark on her forehead is not a shadow, but a bruise that seems to be ever-present.

We waited until the day Curie turned three to give her a hotdog and popcorn, but Elia has already hijacked Curie’s hotdog at 21 months and will eat the entire thing, when Curie will only eat half. She wants her own things now and wants parity if Curie gets something. This has meant that she has claimed the little bicycle in the living room as hers and Curie’s Minnie Mouse jacket as well. At Great Country Farms, when we bought animal food in little sealed cups, Elia needed to have her own which she held like a prized possession. While Curie fed the animals with her feed, Elia clutched the cup in the crook of her elbow and would not give it up. She did not end up using all of her feed.

The best thing recently is when she sings to herself when she doesn’t know anyone is listening. Her favorite song is a rendition of Let it Go that you can just make out. She raises her hand to one side and tries to twirl when she sings, if you catch her she will grin and continue, but when she doesn’t know you are looking, it is positively adorable. Parenting is stressful and you forget to take care of each other as spouses, if you are not careful, you take each other for granted at best and hurt each other at worst. It is balanced by the beauty and joy of children, and we are careful to make choices that protect the family the most. We must practice what we preach – when we tell Curie that beauty comes from within, sometimes that means sacrificing personal ambition and success for the sake of family, and that doing the right thing makes us beautiful right?

Elia has this “hee haw” laugh that is completely unadulterated: “uh hyunh, uh hyunh, uh hyunh.” Not baby-like, not lady-like, more than a snort, all adorable. She often likes to cover her mouth when she laughs with the palm of a whole open hand.

It has been a magnificent month for Elia. At the beginning of the month she began saying “Julie” and “Poppop,” and almost “Grandmom.” She would repeat “merrily, merrily” during Row, Row, Row Your Boat. She was captivated at Thomas Land and would call the trains “tu-tu.” And if it were just that, we would have been happy with her progress.

Something clicked on our trip to New Orleans with Bernard and his family. She began saying “thank you” – “thu-thu” after everything you give her (especially when you are feeding her roasted and cracked watermelon seeds in the car), and most importantly she learned the word “mine,” which sounds more like an abbreviated “main.” Since then, she has become very possessive about everything, though Erin suspects that she has always been possessive, but can only now articulate it. She started to sing “ah town” from Wheels on the Bus for “all through the town,” when we sing it with her, and more impressively, will now sing “Let it go,” to herself spontaneously on her own. She sings a lot of it, but the most recognizable part is “De de doh!”

And Frozen is a funny thing (the worst thing to ever happen to parents according to a father at Curie’s birthday party), you see, Elia thinks she is Elsa too, while Curie thinks she is Anna. So Elia reaches for the same Elsa things as Curie. Also when she says “Ah-ah,” you could interpret it as “Anna,” but she is really saying “Elsa.” When we bought Curie an Elsa dress and t-shirt, we had to buy one for Elia as well; when she put on the shirt she was so proud as she pointed with both index fingers to her belly at the picture on her shirt.

Physically Elia has expanded her dancing to include bouncing with her knees as she dances. She is very musical and will sing and dance at the best times. She also has a great butt shake for “Shake it off.”We are becoming very aware of a second child attention-need thing going on. On our New Orleans trip she loved holding hands with the twins, Eleanor in particular, going so far as to call Eleanor’s name repeatedly when the twins went back to their room.

On the trip, she played with the four stuffed rabbits we brought on our trip by throwing them into the crib as a game, and most interestingly, she was the one holding the little tablet with everyone crowded around her to watch Frozen Fever and loved the attention, so much so that she cried when everyone left. She is able to watch phones and tablets without constantly hitting the screen now, and no longer sweeps food off the table when she is done eating.

Curie’s birthday was a bowling party and we took the kids to the lane to get them used to it before the party. Elia loved it both times. She loves bowling, LOVES the shoes, loves the balls, and loves the video games. She claps and laughs after pushing the ball down the ramp, then bursts into tears when it disappears at the end until the ball shows up again at the ball return and then repeats the whole process. Then again Elia likes playing peek-a-boo, whereas Curie would look at you like, “why are you covering your eyes?”

On Curie’s birthday, Erin’s parents came down and her mother took the kids out to the back to clean the backyard (we still haven’t raked last fall’s leaves) not realizing that Elia is a mosquito magnet, even more than Albert putting her on the low man position when we go out. The doctor has recommended mosquito repellant, but Erin’s mother did not know, so Elia got terrible bites on her arms legs and face. Unfortunately two bites were near her eye where there was a small cut. Despite using hydrocortizone, the next day, Curie’s birthday party day, her eye had swollen almost shut. She looked like Rocky at the end of the first and second and third movies’s fights. We took her to the pediatrician (while still getting Curie’s party going), and got two oral medications, a cortizone and an antibiotic for cellulitis. Poor Elia. The medication is working so she is fine, and she never missed a beat in her good mood. One note, we always have had to fight with Curie to take medicine, but the last time we gave Curie antibiotics, Elia wanted some too, so now that she has medicine, she will take it without hassle.

So it has been a wonderful month. Just the other day she added “yes” to her vocabulary complementing the drawn out and musical “no” she likes to say while she shakes her head. Each new word that Curie hears Curie says “Mommy! She said ‘X,’ that’s her first word!” Which is in and of itself adorable. She is experimenting with climbing stairs while holding hands, she is still scared of the vacuum, she loves taking pictures with the camera. She puts the ball in the basketball hoop, and ate Curie’s hotdog the other day, even though she is not supposed to have hot dogs yet. She loves the shower, she loves the pool, she loves washing her hands. She is so good tempered and it is wonderful to see her and Curie play together.

Bedtime for the kids goes like this. At bedtime, Erin takes Elia up to the room to nurse and sleep. Albert watches Curie, then Curie goes up and wakes up Elia accidentally, so Albert comes up and takes Elia downstairs while Curie goes to sleep. Albert and Elia watch TV together until she gets bored and she takes Albert by his thumb and drags him back upstairs to sleep with Mommy. If Mommy has no yet gotten Curie down to sleep, the process repeats itself. Anyway the point is that at some point Elia will just fall asleep at Albert’s side. She loves to rest her head on his shoulder but there are times where she simply has sidles up to Albert. This month while watching Lilo and Stitch with Daddy late in the night she simply  made sure that her side was touching a part of Albert, and thus secured, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.