Category: Elia

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NICU 2019

“They say you never want to be in NICU, but you are grateful if you have to be.” Curie and Elia are NICU alums spending 4 days for Curie and 18 days for Elia. We go every year to say thank you and bring chocolates, even though in Labor and Delivery most of the staff has turned over – people like our friend Emma have long moved on. Analise, Ray, and James are still at NICU but we went after 9:00 PM so we didn’t see them. This year the Labor and Delivery nurses were all at the nursing station and asked the kids their ages it was so nice to interact with them, at least one of them remembered us from past years. At NICU, the lady let the kids into the front doors into the foyer and also asked them their ages. For some reason we take a family picture in the security mirrors in the hallway when we go, so here is this year’s – we Chens have a lot of traditions.
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Elia December 2019

“It’s snot, It’s not. It’s NOT! It’s SNOT! It’s not snot, It’s NOT! It’s SNOT!” This is Albert and Elia’s conversation for almost 20 minutes in the car driving Curie nuts, driving Erin nuts. “It’s snot….” Peals of laughter goading each other on. “It’s not…” Doesn’t matter where or when, they will start and get frustrated protests from the other two. If Elia is upset or crying or anything, Albert just has to make a potty joke and she will burst out laughing. And if you say anything like “It’s not funny…” Watch out because you may just start them off again. Continue reading “Elia December 2019”

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Elia November 2019

It takes time to blog and often you find yourself months behind in the work. The end of the year is weird for Elia’s blog as you will find Halloween in her November blog, Thanksgiving in her December blog and her birthday and Christmas in her January blog. Perhaps it is time to cycle the blogs together but for now this is how it is. For Halloween, we had inclement weather so we took the girls to Pentagon City Mall to trick or treat. Elia was Jasmine and Curie was Cinderella/and the Fairy Godmother. We had a great time actually (except forgetting that we don’t like the Chinese street food restaurant there) with most stores participating and being good sports. The best was the Lego store but the kids got a pretty good haul. Continue reading “Elia November 2019”

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Halloween 2019

Halloween 2019. Tornado watch now for our area. We are going to the mall. This is Curie and Elia this morning waiting for the bus and for their parade at school.
So Erin was going to be Mommy Shark even before the Nats won, but she conveniently had red and white for her costume. Albert was the out-of-shape Peter C. Parker (not Peter B. Parker because he was not Chinese) complete with sweat pants. We did go to the mall for the first time, and had a really good time. The stores didn’t all participate and they could have taken advantage more by giving out one day coupons or similar (only Roots did something like that). We did get to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood too.
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Elia October 2019

We may need to rotate Elia’s blog to the beginning of the month or at least title it differently since Halloween is at the end of October and will show up in November’s blog. We are also so far behind in blogging that it doesn’t matter as much to try to write a blog every 15 days. In any case, Elia continues to define her personality and her self. She tries hard to be funny, and can largely laugh at herself if she is laughing already. If we tell her she is cute or funny though, she can give us a “doo-doo face.” She likes to tell you to “look at my booty,” or say “a’ight” for “all right.” She continues to have a facility for dancing and loves to sing to songs on the “radio.” Continue reading “Elia October 2019”