Elia is at that phase in life where her growth is outpacing our story-telling. At the beginning of the month she had just started saying “yeas” instead of “ya” and we quickly jotted this down. As the month progressed she could identify the animals from our zoo trip: “a da da dur,” alligator, “tee ta”, cheeta, and “cow,” bison. Her sentences started with “Ji-ji, pay?” Jie-jie will you play? to “Dada, me poo-poo, hep peas,” Daddy, I need to poo-poo in the potty, help please.
She has gone from “Ya-ya,” to “Ee-ya,” to “Lia.” When she asks what is this she says “that is?” Especially when it comes to Star Wars cards, she asks us who is on the card, “that is?”
The sophistication in her understanding and diction has come out in her speech as well. She started the bad habit of needing to “wash ecks daddy ipah,” watch eggs on Daddy’s iPad, which in turn translates into watch kids YouTube on Albert’s iPad. The other day she woke Erin up by telling her she had a bug on her face, and then when Erin jumped up rubbing her face and saying where? Elia then laughed and said “nooo” in a just kidding way.
She not only understands, but processes complex ideas and remembers them. Curie had her plan of giving us time to go to the movies a month ago, but that was delayed because of a snow storm. Curie had wanted Poppup and Grandmom to watch them so that we could see Star Wars (actually not Star Wars, but Curie had assumed we would want to see Star Wars because we had gone to Udvar and did this two viewing exchange with the kids when it came out). So we didn’t do it then, but when Poppup and Grandmom were coming this time, Curie said, “we need to do the plan,” and Elia spoke up, mind you no one had said anything about Star Wars, “Mama, Daddy, Star Wars.”
At the beginning of the month we were impressed the Elia wanted to use the potty, now she will ask almost every time. Earlier, loved to play with her horse, now rides the back of the couch pretending it is a horse: a shift in imagination. She buckles her own car seat chest buckle now, and has her own opinion when it comes to surprises. Curie will want ponies, Elia will want “sopkins,” Shopkins, or Star Wars cards.
Other things have happened too, she spilled Albert’s semi-permanent blue-black fountain pen ink all over her hands and feet, she wanted to learn martial arts when Curie went to take her class, she called it Star Wars though since we had talked to Curie about learning to fight like Rey. When we went to Dave and Buster’s she loved the coin game; when it came time to spend her 5,000 tickets, her first choice was a foot high Superman doll from the Animated Adventures of Superman, though she calls it “batman.”
At the end of the month, (the 15th for the purposes of this blog), she finally got her own back pack from REI. Curie has had hers for so long now but only recently started wearing it. Part of this is getting ready for school, but it is good to carry her toys. Elia loves luggage, she loves to pull a carry on, push luggage, and as it turns out, wear a back pack. She had been wearing the carry-on because she did not have her own back pack. So Albert bought her her own REI back pack, pink with green zippers. She loves her “pak-pak” so much that she wears it into the car seat to be buckled together with it. She is so pleased with it and takes it everywhere, she loves it almost as much as Star Wars, but not quite.
While Grandmom and Poppup were visiting Elia fell while gardening and bit the front and back of her lower lip, we thought it might have gone through, or would leave a scar. Albert had gone to Home Depot but Erin says there was a lot of blood. Scary, and at the same time it showed how resilient they are. She was laughing and eating meat later that night. No stitches, just Neosporin and hydrogen peroxide, and now, a few weeks later, it looks like we might have gotten lucky and it won’t scar much. We say it a lot, parenting is hard and it can be stressful, but it is also amazing and we wouldn’t give it up for the world.
