Category: Updates

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Curie’s Achievement

This will be in Curie’s blog post, but I wanted to say something now since we are grateful to Curie’s teachers and proud of Curie’s hard work:

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!

Okay, I just edited this so that Curie would have a picture here, and Curie said “what am I flying around?”

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Elia May 2017

Every parent has stresses and many have more than we have, so it is not a complaint but an observation that juggling parenting with work, work travel, selling a house, dealing with finances, worrying about almost everything is very taxing on health, life, and relationships and it is taking the time to appreciate the little things, working on your relationships, and being present in the moment positively that gets you through the days.

When you are young parents you think that each year is the best and your favorite, and while there are arguments for each phase, advice that we received that yes, this is a great age, but every age is too (until teenage years I am sure, but the people giving advice did not have teenage children yet). Elia is in a remarkably cute phase, yes every phase seems to be cute, but you will have to bear with happy parents writing. She has been becoming more aware of her humor and her language, that what she says really makes people react and others, she says things that she doesn’t realize are amazing.

Once when we were getting ready for bed and one of us said “Elia, I love you.” Elia’s response was, “I know, I love Curie.” Her language development is coming along well, but she still says “t” for “c” and so it comes out “Turie.” She and Curie are also is really into “assage” meaning “massage” and they will proceed to rub your back. She is also processing words “duck, duckling, dog, dogling” in an adorable way.

Both kids sing a lot, either making up songs (Elia’s “my heart can sing and I will remember”), singing the ones they learned in school, or the classics, but as of late it has been Moana and Beauty and the Beast (the live movie edition). For Moana, Elia’s favorite song is “Away, away,” but she loves singing “Your Welcome even more. The best is when she sings “adowable,” and “the BOD!” If you know the song, you know what I mean. She also decided to no longer be scared of the crab song saying, “I brave,” even when, or because, Curie still doesn’t like it.

The kids have seen Beauty and the Beast three times in the theater now and we will buy it when it comes out. Elia was so proud that she was now brave to watch it. She knows most of the words and will sing it by herself, sing when we are singing it, and ask us to sing it. The most recent time we went the kids sang to the movie which was as entertaining for their aunt Julie as it was for them (Curie kept explaining plot points).  Elia loves the song “Belle” but for her it is “Bonjour,” “you play Bonjour?” “No, I want Bonjour!” but the best is when we play it. She is obsessed with her Belle dress and insists on taking the part of Belle “no, no, I Belle, you be the bonjour.” “The bonjour,” we love it.

She wants to play Belle when we sing and wants Albert to be the Beast “you my Beast” and either Curie or Erin to be the prince (yes two roles). But the other character she wants to be is LeFou, which she pronounces “M’Fou” (in Elia’s Maui voice, “its adowable), and wants you to be Gaston. So she loves “Bonjour,” “our favorite song (Gaston)” but most recently she asks for “kill the Beast” over “Tale as Old as Time” or the one where Belle and Beast discover Stockholm syndrome…rather when they start feeling something for each other. She also likes the new song that Beast sings. So as much as we resisted the princess for Curie (who laments that she wants to be Belle sometimes), it is really cute when Elia says “you put on my Belle dress?

A couple of other things, Elia loved being on the boat and took control of the motor at one point when we went to Burke Lake. She was fearless about playing with crawfish (she was wearing her Belle dress at first and told Erin that “I the Belle crawfisher” when we had live crawfish at home, became very proud of peeling crawfish and now loves to eat them, a relief because she was the hold out on loving crawfish for a while.

It turns out the Tinkerbell movie and sequels are really good, yes, yes, we were those parents that didn’t want the kids obsessed, but it wasn’t until the kids learned the “everyone who smiles is pretty, and beauty is in your actions and comes from within” lesson that we have relented (given in, caved, and capitulated). We still are opposed to the broad commercialization of it all though.

Final cute thing, when Curie was younger and whining we would tell her she has to use a strong voice or a nice voice. That didn’t really work (parents could probably have told us), so we asked her instead to use a robot voice, which she thought was hilarious and took her out of her unhappiness to say things in that voice. Well, the other day we asked the same of Elia, where she had a moment of internal conflict where you could see her not wanting to do it but really wanting the thing she wanted. Here is how we knew, and it is adorable (yes you are thinking Elia in Maui’s voice), Elia can’t do the robot voice without using her hands too in a robot way, so she was starting the hand motion even before she could articulate anything, much less in the robot voice. Someone said that she is a method actor.

Two final things, during prayers she said “I thankful for the sun,” which is subtly pretty sophisticated, and something of a favorite, “I am a little bit small and a little bit tall” to explain that she is still little even though she wants to be tall. It is wonderful being a parent even if life feels hard. More later, take care.

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Curie April 2016

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.

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Elia April 2017

Life seems to go faster and faster these days. Blink, and we have been in our new house for a year already, blink and Curie is almost done with kindergarten. Blink, and Elia is a little girl and no longer a toddler. Try as we may, and we have many a staring contests to prove it, even if you try, eventually you blink.

The secret is to cherish each and every day, and kids, if you are reading this years from now saying, that we have already written this, I am sorry, we will likely write it again and again.

This month was hard, Albert had a Board meeting, we went to Erin’s conference in Ottawa, and in general haven’t gotten enough rest or had time to relax, but in between the busy things we have had a great time.

Elia has been saying great things. When we go to sleep we try to get the kids with heads on pillows and feet facing toward the other end, but things don’t always end up that way. We tell them that they need to be crayons in a box and Elia will say “I the yellow crayon,” Curie will say “I am the purple crayon,” and they will tell Erin she is the blue crayon and Albert the black crayon. Then Elia will say “I the yellow crayon, good night blue crayon, goodnight, purple crayon, good night black crayon!” And even before this we had said we are a sandwich with mommy and daddy being the bread and Elia the cheese, and Curie the meat. Afterward Elia said “I love you bread,” to which we replied, “I love you cheese.”

Elia loves to drink carbonated drinks and not just the sugar (diet) sodas, she loves sparkling water even though we tell her it is bad for her teeth (Curie loved sparkling water too). The other night we asked if she was drinking seltzer, she said “no, I drink Perrier, I the Perrier monster.” So brand is important too (she can tell Perrier has littler bubbles.”

We saw the live-action Beauty and the Beast twice in the theater with 3D glasses, and the kids left them on both times. Elia in particular has been captivated by the movie insisting on wearing her Belle dress, a tutu with Belle and  Phillpe on the front. She used to run around telling Curie or Albert “you my prince,” nowadays, she tells Albert “you my Beast.” When it came time to reward the kids for their behavior in Ottawa, Curie wanted a Belle doll which then became a Wonder Woman doll that she saw in the store. Elia initially also wanted a Belle doll, but when it came time to buy it, she changed her mind and wanted a costume instead and for days now has been wearing the yellow Belle dress. Oh my how far we have come since Curie wanted an Elsa dress.

Here is the thing, Curie is older now and understands the “anyone who smiles is pretty” lesson pretty well, and lo and behold, her little sister has been listening this whole time and absorbing everything, because one day she says to Albert from the back of the car, “I beautiful, look, I smiling,” capturing the essence of “anyone who smiles is pretty.” Now they understand that “beauty comes from your actions,” but they don’t always get there, especially if they are tired.

At school, she plays with her new friend Eva every day and they play mommy and baby or plays soccer with her, even though they don’t have Soccer Shots there. She and Eva get along so well, Elia will say “E like Elia, Eva, and Mommy!” She also is ready to do martial arts and tells us she will join Tiger Tots when she is four. She is willful and adorable, especially if we forget and let her have chocolate before bed time. She wants to play all the games we do and will play twenty questions and can even do the alphabet game a little when driving in the car. She is wonderful and fantastic and very considerate, even when she wants what Curie wants. When Curie wanted to be Elsa, Elia said, “I Lego Elsa, Curie is Big Elsa, I Lego Elsa.” We are biased, but we have the greatest kids and we are so proud of them. Elia the other night was so cute, we were playing with her Harry the Bunny and pretending to save him. She said, “you save Harry?” to which we replied “yes.” She thought a moment and said “you save me too?” Makes you want to smile, laugh, cry, all at the same time. “Of course we will darling, always!”

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Curie March 2017


These days, we’ve been running up against each new curve ball we’re thrown as if they are some sort of conspiracy instead of just embracing that challenges are simply a part of life. Having more than one anchor is critical as we grow older; when things don’t go well at work, knowing your kids and your spouse still love you can be a revelation.

Curie has been maturing a lot recently; we don’t mean she is mature yet, rather she is learning to control her emotions more. Whether it is having a reward to work for, determining whether it is a small problem or big problem, or, more recently, behaving because Elia is not behaving (it is funny and interesting to watch – “I am behaving, right?” Curie is getting her feelings under control more and more – let’s say 60% of the time right now.

Cure is also working on giving and sharing with Elia. Albert told his mom this and was surprised to hear her tell him not to let her concede all the way – perhaps something that happened when he and his brother and sister were kids. Curie is very aware of our treatment of Elia and how we encourage her. There is a sense of unfairness she feels and wants attention and time with both of us; she actually gets more attention because of it, but she doesn’t feel like she does. Elia has been tellling Albert that he is “her Beast” in reference to Beauty and the Beast, but it comes across like claiming posession to Elia especially as Elia acts up at bed time and Albert has to take her to a different room. Elia gets calmed and Curie sees it as Albert and Elia having quality time.

We have been to many birthday parties lately and recently while attending a birthday party for a friend from pre-school, another guest and former playmate came up and said “Hi Curie! I’m XXXX, remember me?” Curie’s response was “I don’t remember you.” Candor at that age is pretty brutal. “Daddy, you have a big tummy,” or “you have a big butt!” Part candor part getting a rise out of us. We know we have to work on it with her, but it is pretty funny sometimes.

We’ve been working on schoolwork as well. Both of us need to be better at afterschool lessons with her. She doesn’t have homework per se yet but we need to build the habit. Curie loves lessons with us, it gives her one-on-one time and affirmation. Projects she has had to do at home recently include making a poster for being the class VIP for a week where she listed ten things she loves (family, Wonder Woman, the beach, bunnies, cats, rainbow ponies, ramen, Robin, and snow). We let her draw and write and printed pictures she wanted; as much as we wanted to help, letting her make her own was wonderful to see. She is so proud of it. We are too, we even framed it. Part of being the class VIP was to take care of Curly, a teddy bear in a backpack with clothes and books. The assignment was to do something with Curly and log it in his journal, like Flat Stanley. We went on a walk in the woods with the kids’ bikes and took a picture for his journal.

Curie tested for her white belt with stripe at “martial arts (tae kwon do).” It was amazing to see how much she has improved; her kicks are on, her push-ups are adorable (15 of them!), and her sparring was great. She is the smallest and youngest at the school (and at her actual school) we went in and saw the small kids and looked again to see Curie standing behind the small kid looking smaller. Erin’s family came to watch and she was so proud when she passed. Elia loves going to see Curie at martial arts and really wants to be a Tiger Tot when she is four. Curie loves martial arts so much that she did not want to take swim lessons because she thought it might make her miss martial arts (it wouldn’t, we have to sign her up still).

Curie is still sensitive. The day we went to the birthday party, we had met up with Natalie and Chloe at Michaels to paint bird houses. She loves hanging with the two of them and did not want to go to the birthday party. When we did go, she cried the whole way because she was missing lunch with them. She was also very good about not playing favorites when Natalie and Isabella, friends from preschool and kindergarten came on the same day for a play date (both of their mothers were/are pregnant and we wanted to give them a break). And the other night when we were worried about our taxes (all is fine), she saw that Erin was unhappy and told her that she wanted to take away all the sadness. We reminded her of the lesson in Inside Out where sadness is important to appreciate happiness. It reminded Albert of when he was in third grade and he asked God to take away Bernard’s bad grades and give them to him after Bernard got a D in first grade (Bernard has of course done great, and Albert has done fine too). To end on a lighter note, and speaking of Inside Out, Curie loves to do the Riley mooning and slapping her butt recently. It cracks her up. We are in Ottawa, hence the longer post. More next month.

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Elia March 2017

At night, Erin has the kids say prayers in what they were thankful for in the day. Curie ultimately has been saying she is thankful for “boo boo butt” which Elia likes to copy, but Elia likes to start with either family or each of us. Elia has us go in order in the bed, usually starting with Erin, then Curie, then herself, then Albert. While the rest of us say what we are grateful for, Elia substitutes “grateful” with “thank you” as in “I thank you for Mommy and Daddy, and Turie.”

In addition to pronouncing her hard C’s as T’s, she had been saying “yook,” instead of “look” and copying Curie with “lellow” instead of “yellow,” but the othe day, “Yook” became “look” for a little while.

She is getting precocious. The other day, Erin was saying to Albert that Elia doesn’t miss a thing. Elia who happened to be walking by said “Nope!” without even turning her head our direction. A part of this is that she is in her “terrible three’s” testing her boundaries, crying when she doesn’t get what she wants, and asserting herself around possesion of toys to establish her identity, especially wanting what Curie has. She asks for what Curie has in a nice way though, “please I have that?”

While Curie is less about the princess thing now, Elia is fully immersed. She has an Elsa dress, a Belle tutu, and a Batgirl costume that she loves to wear. Lately it has been the Elsa dress, though after seeing Beauty and the Beast in the theater (the girls wore “cosplay” in that they wore Belle print dresses), she does like both Belle and Elsa. “You get my Elsa dress?” “You sing ‘Let it go,” I dance?” “you my prince” and very cute, she said to Curie “You wear Elsa dress too so we match?” She loves to have things match, it is her taking after the “connection” activity that Curie brought home from kindergarten – whenever you have something in common, you say “connection!” Elia likes us to match, “you underwear match my dress!” or if you are eating or drinking the same thing or from the same glasses “we match!” The other day she actually said “connection!”

Her language gets better and while she repeats words a bit when she is talking faster than she is processing, she is pretty sophistcated in what she says. Then there are funny things like when it was windy “Uppy!  I blowing away!” or telling us who she loves and family members she is scared of. And her friends, she loves her friends both from her old school at Skyline and her new one at Rosslyn. “Eva funny, Sophia funny, Robbie funny, I love them.” Robbie is Elia’s Navi, “I love Robbie, he my friend.” When we went to Flight she asked specifically to invite him.

Life continues to throw us curve balls, but we keep coming back to family. Albert has been saying the kids are a saving grace in the face of hardship. Erin has commented on the smiles they bring even when things seem hard. We are grateful, even when we are knocked down, we have our family and we truly appreciate that.

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Curie Sparring in Her White Belt with Stripe Test

“Sweep the leg!!!!!” “Crane-kick… no one can defense!”

Curie sparring at her “white-belt-with-stripe-test.” Julie has video that perhaps she would upload. Curie is the youngest and littlest member of EMA in Springfield. Her sparring pads are so big she can’t bend her arms, and those are the smallest size.

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Curie February 2017

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.

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Elia February 2017

We chose to switch Elia to the Rosslyn Bright Horizons. We did this with a few misgivings, there is no slide and they do not have Soccer Shots as a program two things Elia loves. On the other hand it did not have a shooting in her classroom. We pulled the trigger the day they had the conference call and were the first people to make the transition. We were told that she would be in a classroom that did not have a window, as if it were a bad thing, for us the room without windows is just fine.

Elia has had a little bit of transition manifestations, she started having more accidents at school and at home. She has started to learn the other kids’ names but misses Robbie, and Sophia, and Ivy, and Charlie. She has been able to copy her name at sign-in and the center seems better managed, at least on the surface. She loves the idea that she gets to go to a new school too, and loves that it is close to Daddy’s work, “I close your work!” On occasion she says “we hurry! We run Target!” Because at Skyline we had to run to get in the back before 6:00. There is a little Target express near Albert’s work, but Elia doesn’t like the “little Target” as much as the big one.

Our commute improved and now we only take one car to work, which is interesting. Potentially we save on HOV and parking, and we get in a little earlier and can beat the crowd onto the HOV.

She is growing and has leaned out quite a bit. In her words, “I little bit tall and little bit small,” with matching hand gestures. She uses “Y” for “L” a lot with “Yets go!” Or “Yook Mama, yook!” where as Curie uses “L” for “Y” with “Lellow car.” She has had growing pains at night complaining that her knee hurts and cries in the middle of the night and the early morning.

Erin’s parents came down and Elia spent a great day playing catch with Grandmom, and when playing mommy and baby with Curie, she refers to Erin and Albert, as grandma and Poppup. She was playing “three little monkeys (not five) and referred to us as: “Daddy monkey, sister monkey, baby monkey, grandma monkey” with Erin being the grandma, it was very interesting.

Recently we have been buying dresses on clearance at Target. Curie has been wearing a red Tsum Tsum dress, a black Minnie Mouse dress, and a purple Shopkins dress, Elia has a Minnie Mouse tutu, a Belle tutu, and a Batgirl tutu, which is her favorite. They both have Elsa dresses. Very girly except for the fact that they play not girly in them. Elia wants to be like Curie and and when Curie got her new seat she too wanted a new seat but has Curie’s purple seat as a consolation prize (she did not want to give up the white seats that Bernard gave us at first and Albert had to just change them without her knowing). Then there was the day that she asked Albert, “I big now?” to which he replied “Yes” because she always wants to be big and stands up on her chair to show us how tall she is. Then because she is big she asked, “I ride bus?” because she knew that we told her she could ride the bus when she as bigger months ago. Albert said “not yet” and she burst into tears. It was so sad, heart breaking.

On a lighter note, Elia and Curie have been playing Moana in the Moana boat Albert got for them on clearance at Target. Curie is almost always Moana, but even when she is not Elia will want to be Pua. She came up to Albert and said, “I pig, onk (not “oink”), she loves being the pig, what a sweetheart.

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Curie January 2017

One of Albert’s oldest and closest friends just told him that he has been in the hospital for nearly a month and had almost died. He is fine now and will be discharged soon (his wife only now let him have his phone). His advice to Albert, and indeed to all of us is to appreciate what we have and that he was glad to see us and the girls this past December. We take his words to heart and cherish our families and our children.

Curie started kindergarten less prepared than we would have liked; her pre-school, the one we just moved out of did not give her everything she needed, and as the youngest child in the class, she did not have as much time as others to get ready. That all being said, she started the year at 103 out of 193 on her diagnostic test and six months later is at 163 out of 193, a great improvement celebrated not only by us, but by her teacher as well. We have finally bought her workbooks and are working to help her in school (though carving out time is proving harder than we thought). She loves to write in the numbers on our receipts for tips and loves to read books with us each night (she is also proving to be a good role model for Elia who wants to learn).

She finally outgrew the forward facing seat and has transitioned into a new booster seat (Elia wants one too), got a new backpack (hers was 12 liters and the teacher asked us to get a new one, now 18 liters – Albert got it from REI and did not get a character backpack), and a new water bottle after we found out that we had not been cleaning the straw and bite valve as well as we should have.  She loves having a wallet and money to buy snacks at martial arts.

Curie’s favorite shows are DC Superhero Girls (though she calls it Disney Superhero Girls), Sarah and Duck, and Moana clips on YouTube (“Eggs”). She and Elia sing the songs from Moana every day and likes when Albert spoofs them with “I am sitting at the edge with my daughter, because I am her father,” and “Awake awake, you have to be awake.” Albert bought the girls a 70% off Moana boat that pops up and the girls can play in it. It has been tremendous for the two of them, though Curie insists on being Moana, and Elia tells us she is the pig. The Moana clips even surpassed her “Egg” viewing and Sarah and Duck.

We documented the girl’s lesson in gift giving recently and are planning to do more. In martial arts, the students can earn tips for their belts, colored tape on the ends of their belts, for various things; Curie has an orange tip and is earning a red tip for her form. But one tip we want to get for her is the yellow tip, that a parent can do when a student does something great at home, and we feel that this may be the thing for which to award her.

Curie has been wearing long fancy dresses at school (Elia too), had her hair cut again (her hair is getting fuller), letting Albert brush her hair each day, and generally being a great kid that whines sometimes, but only when she is hungry or tired. We got a photo album for her pictures and she immediately took to arranging them. It is interesting how the physical picture is so precious. Her friends Navi and Natalie both took pictures home with them as souvenirs. We have been going to Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot a lot recently where Curie has liked both chicken and meat, and recently started to eat the meat in Pho rather than just meatballs. Her favorite is Chuy’s mac and cheese, though she loves to help cook, and recently did almost all the prep work except for cutting the meat for beef noodle soup. She is quick to use the kitchen scissors and now uses a sharp knife blunt nose tip knife for her cooking (under supervision of course).

These days, as rough and eventful as they might be for us at work and in the world, are still enormously special times for us where the kids love unconditionally, and play time is paramount in a child’s mind. Curie looks for more time with both of us, with her writing at school that she aspires to spend more time with momma. Besides playing school, and mommy and baby, and doctor, magic and queens, we spend time in bed pretending to be things. The other day playing with Elia and Erin, Curie said that she was queen of the pandas and that Elia was the baby panda, Albert was the daddy panda and Erin was the Mommy panda named Herrera. At least she didn’t call Erin the grandmother like Elia did.