Category: Updates

Curie July 2015. And kids keep growing whether you want them to or not. It is hard to believe Curie is almost four but she has begun asking to sleep in her own room though she has slept in the family bed almost all of her life. Now, she does ask Albert to sit in the hall so that she can see him and he does promise to wait until she sleeps before he does, but just the desire to sleep by herself is such a change for us. Curie is so eager to be a big girl that she wanted a shower the other day even though she hates showers. We are so proud that she is so proud of herself, how cool is that?

We have been responding to Curie’s changing sleep patterns (unlike Elia who has decided that she lives in the other hemisphere and has jet lag), and have made simple rules for sleeping when she said: “I don’t know how to sleep.” 1) Lay down. 2) Close your eyes. 3) Take deep breaths. 4) Go to sleep. And amazingly she will recite them to you and try to sleep – let’s say 40% of the time.

We have begun realizing the importance of individual time. Time spent exclusively with a kid, or time for a kid to exclusively spend time with a parent. There is bonding time here, time to build the “core memories” that we can’t waste. Albert spent time with the kids when they were sick because he was at home, but Erin has made a significant effort to take time off from work to spend with the kids, and that has been immeasurable in her relationship with Curie and Elia. In the end, Erin still gets more “I love you the best”s from Curie and is the one the kids want when things go wrong, but there is definitely a Daddy’s girl beginning – not that we are competing or anything (seriously, we are not competing, how wonderful is it to see your most precious in wonderment at the one you love?).

Curie had a scary staph infection over her eye earlier that we were lucky to catch at the urgent care and then the pediatrician. What was interesting was her reaction to the medicine. You may recall our traumatizing experience with penicillin earlier forcing her down to give her the medication. This time we started with her wailing and crying about the antibiotics, to bribing her, to cajoling, but one day while she was crying she took the medicine and we asked her “so if we just make you take it, it is all right?” And she said “yes” (boundaries?), then the next day she took it without crying, only saying she wished it wasn’t white, and then after she was more and more okay with it until she was proud she could take the medication. All of this in ten days, remarkable, isn’t it?

Curie still loves Elia going so far as to call Elia her best friend and one night while Elia was nursing Elia held onto Curie’s arm compelling Curie to say “it’s the first time she has done that!” This is not to say they don’t fight, don’t ever let blogs and social media rewrite history to be so rosy, Elia is of the age where the little car Curie loved fits her now, but Curie still loves her car and they often will have to decide who gets to ride it and who pushes (yes, Elia likes to push too, but not very far), fortunately Curie likes to push too. And when Elia wouldn’t listen to her while playing trains, she began taking apart the train set so that no one could play with it.

Curie has begun telling jokes and loves to ask Alexa, our Amazon Echo from Erin’s father, Jim to tell her a joke, or tell her the weather. Apologized to Erin one night about asking Erin not to sit next to her earlier in the day. She has new found manual dexterity to build block towers, Duplos, and train tracks. But  most importantly this month, she finally saw Frozen, no joke – we have let her see the “Let it go” video and part of the “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” song, but for a girl so obsessed with Elsa (Albert is okay with queens, but not helpless princesses), it is amazing that she has not seen the movie. You see, she had her own version of what happens, that was flawed. Something about using her powers to be get away from Anna and be alone (sort of true, but not really) because she would rather be alone. To disabuse her of the notion she got to see the whole thing with some chaperoning, and of course she loved it.

So Curie is growing up, but gratefully, she still wants her parents. She is opinionated and rambunctious, lively and wonderful: getting back to sleeping, Curie does still “miss Mommy” and goes back to the master bedroom from time to time to sleep with her and Elia. She does still want to play instead of sleep and (often provoked by Albert) will get out of control, but with the sleep rules reinforced, she will settle down, and sometimes when it is necessary,  Albert will put his hand on her back and tell her in no uncertain terms, “Curie, you are safe. You are loved,” and more often than not, moments later, she will be asleep.

Curie June 2015. Children are a source of strength. During times of anxiety or stress, it is easy to get paralyzed; this happened to Albert during racquetball a while ago (not because of the game). What got him through was “how would I want Curie or Elia to deal with things like this when they are older?” In that game, Albert beat his racquetball partner for the first time in two and a half years. So as much as we raise and take care of our kids, and as much as we have “aww” moments and moments of awe, family, and in our case kids too are truly a source of stability for us.

Curie grew a centimeter since we last measured her at three and a half and has begun actively wanting to learn to read. Books are more and more important to Curie and she will ask us to teach her to read; if we can’t at the moment, she will tell us the story by describing the pictures with her own interpretation, sometimes with very funny results.

Curie can identify about half of the alphabet on signs and on books – capital letters that is, and she can not only identify “C” “U” “R” “I” and “E” separately, but also write CURIE herself.  To help her guide where she writes, Albert drew boxes for each of the letters and when Erin told the teachers they now draw boxes or her as well. In addition to writing her name she likes to copy the names of her loved ones in boxes as well. If she comes across a letter in her name, she will say “hey they have a letter __ just like me!”

She is learning the real pronunciations of words that were cute in their mispronunciation, for instance,  she stopped saying “orangie” and now says “orange;” we are proud and wistful at the same time. She still says “lello” for “yellow” and at one point she stopped saying “bellela” saying “umbrella” properly for a while. When she has reverted back to “bellela,” we secretly, along with “lello” and a whole host of other cute mispronunciations, don’t want to correct her.

Like other kids her age, Curie likes to walk on top of walls and on curbs (usually holding our hand and making Elia want to do things that are quite advanced for her). She pretends to be a mother or a teacher or a scientist or a doctor. She competes with her best friends at school on who has the longest dress so that she can be the “mommy” for the day. In short, she is a healthy three year old, ready to turn four.

And then she does some precocious and funny things like saying “strange, Elia is not sleepy;” what three year old uses “strange,” to preface a sentence? She makes up full songs with rhymes, nothing sophisticated per se, but impressive nonetheless. She makes up games for us to play in the car, and asks us to “tell the story” when she overhears something she is interested in. She remembers when we last did something or where another thing happened.

There will come an age when she no longer wants to play trains on the floor or tea party with her parents anymore. There will be the day when she wants to be with her friends more than with us, and there will be the day she is ashamed we are her parents. These are all realities of raising children, so right now, when she wants to be with us the most: when she says, “who is going to look after me?” Remembers to be quiet when you are on the phone and kisses you cheek to remind you that she remembered; kisses Albert to say thank you for making dinner; stages shows to show us she can twirl, laughs hysterically with Elia and teaches her to jump; Curie goes out of her way to help Elia, and is sad when Elia doesn’t hug her – these are all simple little girl things that make this age so special – right now, it is worth being a little less ambitious, a little less successful, and a little less social, so that we can take in these moments and be with our children. As Curie declares when she gets us all together in a bed, “we are a Family!” And the world feels a little better for it.

Curie May 2015. Curie has been asking for us to teach her to read, and, most recently, asking us to teach her to write. Here is what we know so far: she can recognize most numbers and a good number of letters. She can pick out her name from a list of names. She can find letters she has learned in other words. She can copy letters in words and if you create structure like making boxes for the letters she can order them as well. Curie has never used the fist grip for a pencil or pen but has not yet realized that holding it closer to the tip will give her better control. She has us draw the letter with our finger to see how to write it. So, it is a start. and we could not be more proud.

In addition to learning to actually read and write, Curie loves to make cards and “writes” notes on them to people. She writes a scribble on every line on a credit card receipt or form (much like her cousin Miranda did at a similar age). On the reading front, books have become very important to her especially when she is on the potty, and when we can’t read to her we have encouraged her to read to us by describing the pictures in the book.

Her drawing has become more sophisticated as well. On our trip to California, Eleanor took time to teach Curie to draw flowers and other things, which may have sparked a new interest in drawing. Regardless, she likes drawing us with large circles as heads and bodies, she also likes drawing fish, and flowers. I am not sure what that means, but it is a joy to watch her draw. As a result, Elia loves to draw, as best as she can, as well. Curie takes her drawing seriously and calls it her “work.” Once, when we asked her stop and start again in the morning, she woke up and told us she had “work” to do and continued to draw.

The other big interest these days is a desire to work on puzzles. She has expressed an interest in the past, but she wanted us to do them then. These days she likes to do them herself and at Bernard’s house she worked on as many as she could over and over again. Agnes taught Curie how to play Candyland and Chutes and Ladders which she has also taken to. Curie, of course, idolizes her cousins and took to a large koi at the Cal State Long Beach Japanese Gardens named Bubble Gum because her cousins were enamored.

Curie’s vocabulary and diction have improved, to the point that you can have full-on, fairly sophisticated conversations with her. She will tell you things are “tremendous” and “awesome.” She interacts with the TV programs she watches now, particularly with “Little Einsteins,” which teaches kids about music, art, and dance, so she will tell us that “addagio” means slow, or she shows us an “arabesque” when she copies some ballet. She continues to give us her shows and loves big dresses to twirl around.

Because we only let her watch the music of Frozen, her interpretation of it is a little skewed, so we are considering letting her watch the whole thing so that she knows what actually happens. Right now, Elsa uses her magic “Frozen-powers” to keep everyone away so that she can be alone. She freezes Anna to keep her away. We wish Disney would stop killing parents as a theme in their films (along with glorifying princesses, but that is a different beast all together – Curie still does not identify as a Princess but as a Queen – we lost the King, but that is okay).

Finally, Curie has exhibited a really good heart before, notably with the sand toys at National Harbor, and she did so again with Mayar, the little girl from Saudi Arabia we mentioned in an earlier post. We see it most with her interactions with Elia; most recently, Elia has become much more interactive and Curie will share spontaneously with her. They have begun playing more and more together, but how we know that Curie really loves Elia? When they wake, Curie will want a hug from her sister; when they sleep Curie will cry if Elia ignores her; Curie asks to take pictures with Elia, and on planes, she asks to sit next to her and hold her. If Elia goes to one of us, Curie will ask Elia to come to her, and when Elia does touch her or hug her or kiss her, Curie will let us know. Elia is very loved by Curie, and Elia idolizes her big sister.

Curie April 2015. Curie has started saying “gesundheit” after someone sneezes and has begun talking about “responsibility” and “challenges;” her vocabulary has really taken off. Her self-proclaimed responsibilities include protecting Elia when bigger kids bother her, holding things when her parents’ hands are full, and wiping her boots on the front mat (something she makes us do ever since we bought it). Curie is also more considerate than either Albert or Erin and it is sometimes shocking how much we learn from her.At the gift shop, she insisted on buying Erin a cow candle and Albert a train (to share and eventually have for herself), instead of buying something for herself.

As Elia grows up and is more capable, Curie has enjoyed playing with her more, interacting more, and generally enjoying being the big sister. And besides the aforementioned protection for her little sister, Curie expresses more of a willingness to help Elia when she needs help.

Recently Curie has been trending toward longer dresses and things she can twirl in. She likes to play ballerina and Elsa/queen, but here is an interesting thing, she will say she likes princesses but because Albert has expressed that he does not like them as much, says that she is the queen instead. Same with Barbie, because Erin has expressed that she does not like Barbie, Curie will say “we don’t like Barbie right? Except the doctor one, right?”

When you ask her what she wants to do for her job, she takes the question very seriously and says “I want to clean up.” And because her favorite thing to pretend is to be the doctor, we ask “you don’t want to be a doctor?” She replies, I first need to clean and THEN I want to be a doctor.”

Curie has picked up hobbies as well including a rock collection (which takes some curating in that she needs to stick to smaller rocks), her figure/blind bag/box collections, drawing cards for grand parents, rolling Playdoh, and giving stage performances – dance, interpretive dance, and singing. At Cracker Barrel she insists on sitting in the rocking chairs and playing checkers – consisting of stacking the checker pieces and jumping checkers.

In addition to her Frozen obsession, Curie loves the big flashlight, and the LED magnifying glass. She loves being with her parents and loves to help when we do things, she says “I love helping, right?” And she loves to fix things, replace batteries, turn screws, and affix stickers. For being less whiny (on the blind bag scale) for a week she got an airplane by Battat which can be assembled and disassembled by an electric drill with bits. This is her favorite toy – we love that her favorite toy is an engineering toy so much that at Lucy’s party, rather than the Frozen and Disney princesses toys, this is what she wanted to give her.

So it goes without saying that in these challenging times, that our girls keep us going. On one particularly bad day, Albert was upstairs when Erin came home with the girls and Curie kept yelling for Albert who realized how much he would be missed if he weren’t there. From a self-worth standpoint, nothing is better than having your spouse and kids to remind you that health and family are really the important things.

Curie March 2015. Someone wrote recently that the things empty-nesters wish they had taken a picture of was the mundane things, like the dining table everyone ate at or the nightlight the kids used. The big trips and events were great, but to remember the little things was key. Jerry Seinfeld says you should write all the funny things your kids say in a book, because though you think you will remember it all, you don’t. And as these posts get longer and longer on each girl, we realize that there were so many things we should have written about Curie that we didn’t.

When Curie just started being mobile she would feel things for their texture, especially horizontal surfaces, and she would put her palms up against the edge and scratch at the surface with her finger tips learning what this new feeling was. This has been floating in Albert’s mind a lot recently because Elia is similarly discovering so many new things for the first time, and yet we didn’t write it down when Curie was growing up (or if we did, we have forgotten). You can’t write everything down, but this exercise of taking a picture every day makes us feel like we could do a better job remembering for when we are old and empty-nesters ourselves. Erin and I both have one or two pictures for entire years of some of our childhoods (our parents probably have many more in their houses) and it is the pictures that often determine how we remember what happened, that is why this picture-a-day has become so important to us.

Family is becoming much more important to Curie, there is a sense of not-all-being-there when we are not all together she feels. Albert tends to pass out on the couch instead of going to bed and recently Curie has been insisting that he come up to bed so that we can “all be a family.” Elia delights her where she will find ways to play with her, or want to hug her, or kiss her, or play with her feet, or wrestle (not the neck Curie) with her. She makes it a point to kiss Elia when giving kisses to us, and when we have Elia kiss us, she insists on one for herself.

We are making progress on whining and frustration, and the Olaf bag with blind bags has transformed into Easter eggs with figurines from Curie’s favorite shows. Now to be fair, Albert lets her open as many as she needs to to find the one she wants and then they close all the other ones back up and put them back in the bag for future openings. Perhaps not the original idea, but it works and gets her the one she is looking for. She has done some funny things with her figurines, with Captain Barnacle she insisted on holding him when watching Octonauts and held him up every time Captain Barnacle appeared. The next day she wanted Dashi and had Captain Barnacle kiss Dashi when she was bitten by a shark playing with Albert, we thought it was a cute romantic twist until she also got Peso (called “Queso”) and she had Captain Barnacle kiss him too – maybe it is progressive.

Curie loves Play Doh, and wants to play it (notice play it, not play with it) every day, she loves watching the nan and tortilla makers make bread at our local kabob and Mexican places and uses the full sized rolling pins on her Play Doh. At a recent children’s museum trip she started playing with regular sized Legos (technically the bigger ones are Duplos – which BTW Albert just discovered that they are compatible and you can put Legos on Duplos – it was mind blowing), and Elia went from the huge ones from Mega Blocks to Duplos.

Because it is spring it is hard to remember that the month started with a snow storm and right before, Albert had bought Curie a snow shovel. Curie LOVES to shovel snow and clean off the car – until that is, her glove comes off and her hand gets too cold. She also started out-growing her boots, so we took advantage of the return policy that you really shouldn’t do, and returned the boots at REI within the year and got her a larger size (first, for those of you looking down your nose, someone is going to get fantastic almost perfect boots for their kid at the next attic/garage sale, AND REI is getting free advertising for their fantastic return policy right now), but since they didn’t have her size in the boots she had, we swapped them up for some BOGs which both Albert and Erin wanted for themselves. BOGs have cut out handles that make it very easy to pull on, and are perfect. The thing is this, we got her first boots on sale for $32 which were $50 boots. The BOGS were on sale for $49 and we said, hey why not – but they are normally $74 dollars. So Curie is wearing essentially $80 boots ($78 at L.L. Bean). What kid gets $80 boots?

Elia and Curie are playing a lot more now. They will share a sippy cup and actually give it back to each other. The other thing is we are finally using our expensive tricycle which as you can see, has a tandem attachment. Normally Curie won’t ride a stroller or vehicle for longer than a couple of minutes before wanting to be carried, but this time they rode the whole way there and back. Something wonderful is happening.

At the end of the month Bernard visited, and generally, Albert’s family sees us less because of distance so it was a treat. For days Curie was excited that Uncle Bernard was visiting. She worked very hard on a card for him and harder on an envelope that had his name on it (as close as she could get with Erin’s instruction) she then decorated it with a ton of puffed letter stickers. The nicest thing was when Bernard read to Curie and then to Elia and it reminded us how important family is and not just your immediate family.