Erin and Albert…

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.

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.