Elia July 2019

Elia’s catch phrase is “doo-doo face.” It comes from when she makes up words when she can’t think of words to say, but has evolved into whenever she wants to be funny and will tell you you have a doo-doo face or she has a doo-doo face. A doo-doo face is what you think it is, revulsion at a food you don’t like, frustrated face, angry face, a face of annoyance, or of disgust. It is a grimace and a contortion usually followed by a burst of laughter. You can say it to her when she is frustrated and it will make her laugh, Continue reading “Elia July 2019”

Curie June 2019

June means the end of school and the beginning of camp, and the end of second grade for Curie also means the end of preschool for Elia. The girls went back to the dentist and while Elia was okay Curie had more work to do including losing another tooth. When the day came, and she had her tooth extracted the same day Elia graduated from preschool, they ended up extracting two teeth. It was terrible, and while Curie bounced back the next day, she was miserable even as she was helping celebrate Elia’s graduation. Curie (and Albert) have a fear of the dentist and so the night before Curie went to the dentist, Albert spent some time teaching her box breathing to control her anxiety before going to the dentist. Afterward she told Albert (because Erin takes them to the dentist), that she did the breathing, and hopefully having something to concentrate on helped her that day. Continue reading “Curie June 2019”

Elia June 2019

Elia’s June was all about graduating from K-Prep at Bright Horizons. Erin’s parents came up for the event and we took pictures and video for Albert’s parents. Unlike Curie, who we kept in pre-school up until she went to kindergarten, Elia will be going to camp this summer with Curie. We have some misgivings since Ms. Chelsea is really doing a better job than Ms. Ariel did preparing the kids for kindergarten, and we worry whether or not the repeated changes will be too much for Elia. On the flip side, learning about the changes and adjusting to them is not a bad thing either. In the end she will be okay, but Albert remembers the days at camp feeling awkward and alone. We also discovered that Elia won’t be with Curie at camp as the kindergartners go to the little school rather than the big campus at Congo Camp (spoiler, it is July and this all works out). Continue reading “Elia June 2019”

Elia Graduates Pre-School

Today Elia graduated pre-school, and there will be a separate collage for her day in a while. So when Curie graduated, the preschool sent home a letter saying to dress your child up for graduation. Erin was annoyed that they were trying to make us dress our kids up in fancy dresses and outfits, so she “dressed Curie up!”… As Superman. All the other kids were in little dresses and shirts with ties and Curie is as proud as punch in a Superman/girl shirt complete with cape and snow boots. So today, Elia was all dressed up in her fancy dress – if you don’t know, she always wears a fancy dress to school, so this was not any different except for the Jojo Shiwa bow. She looked so cute, but at the last moment, unprompted by us, she had a meltdown saying she did not want the dress and instead wanted her Wonder Woman dress. SO Curie graduated as Superman/girl, and Elia graduated as Wonder Woman, why is that so appropriate?

Curie May 2019

For her second date, Curie chose to take a walk with Albert instead of going somewhere fancy or eating anywhere. They went to the Little Target and Safeway where he and Elia go just to see where they do go. She was excited to get Elia and see Albert’s work and then go to the little store to see what Elia’s day is like. She LOVED Albert picking her up early two Fridays in a row and getting Elia. Elia loved having Curie come get her giving her a huge hug when Curie arrived. 

While Erin was away on a trip, Alice was scheduled to come visit. Albert and the kids needed to get the house ready for her. The girls did not complain about cleaning the house for Alice and they went so far as to go get her a present. Continue reading “Curie May 2019”

Curie April 2019

We forget how little our kids are because they are growing at their own pace and Curie is the older sister and Elia is the younger one. They will always be smaller, more petite, as Dr. Dierks likes to say. But they are growing fantastically, Curie is very creative and loves to draw, make things with Plasticine, and create. She drew a picture for her preschool friends, Natalie and Chloe, which we made copies of for them, and ever since we saw the James May Plasticine episode, Curie likes to make flowers, and soup and fire, and all sorts of things in Plasticine. She told Albert that her favorite things in school were math, art, and music. Not too bad. Continue reading “Curie April 2019”

Elia April 2019

Elia is growing up, she is getting longer and bigger, heavier to lift, but still a little girl. She is five, and we forget how little they are until they go outside and are around other children. She is about the same as her classmates at school, but that is because she is the oldest of the children there. It is almost graduation time and it is pretty incredible. Just this month, she went to kindergarten orientation where she got to play with toys in Curie’s old room, she is ready to ride the bus, she tells people she is going to go to camp with her sister. We had Curie in preschool all the way until kindergarten started. It helps that Curie has been through this before and Curie is telling her all about what to expect at school, on the bus (Elia gets to get on first, and ride in the front seat), and after school at EMA.  Elia is so excited, and though we know she will work through the new things as we all do, we are so proud that she is looking forward to all of this rather than worrying about it. Continue reading “Elia April 2019”

Curie March 2019

It is a remarkable time where the world seems like there is a Bizzaro universe and we are in that one and not the normal one. The only stabilizing thing is family, it is hard to imagine trying to get through the days without it. We have never been so far behind in writing so we will attempt to recount the month’s happenings and try to remember the cute things said and done, but as we move further and further away, it is hard without taking notes. This particular blog was written once already, yet the save draft feature in WordPress has unfortunately not been working and we lost a draft twice already, though the second was just an outline. 

Curie and Elia will always be petite, but it is nice to see that Curie has been growing and wears 6/6x now and no longer 5Ts. She has grown two inches in the past three months. Her reading continues to improve but her writing still needs quite a bit of work, she forgets vowels as she sounds out words, and will write using the whole space rather than regular sized letters. At EMA, she will need to break a board for her next test and with so little mass, Albert bought a few boards to practice. In March, Curie broke her first board and we re-enacted it to get the video and pictures. Continue reading “Curie March 2019”

Elia May 2019

So kids, as we write this it is already July 6th and we are 5 blogs behind, so in the interest of getting caught up, we will focus mainly on what happened and try to include a few funny sayings as we go. The more we fall behind the less we will be able to capture those funny things, so we want to get caught up.

At this point Elia has not yet finished Bright Horizons and we are worried that she will have a hard time adjusting to camp and then again to kindergarten, that the number of transitions would be a lot for one summer. As we worried, she worked in Ms. Chelsea’s class toward graduation and learned the lines to the Gruffalo play. She actually learned the other students’ lines before learning hers, or rather liked saying the brown mouses’ lines to us as she showed how much she remembered her lines. Continue reading “Elia May 2019”