Erin and Albert…

So Elia kind of exploded this month, she went from single word diction to two word sentences; Elia started to string words together on December 4th: “Dada, up,” “hi Da,” “off mine,” “bye Da.” Then on December 7th, started chaining three words: “mine, shoes, on.”

She now calls herself “Yeh-yeh” for Elia, and will call herself “me” on occasion – a sophisticated turn of events. Another sophisticated change: she asked “why” for the first time when I said we needed to change a light bulb. At the beginning of the month, all colors were “yellow,” but now she says “blue,” and “purple” (and “yellow” has become “wellow”). She loves to pull a pillow up onto her chest and say “night!” As if it is a blanket. And over Thanksgiving, she learned to count with her Ah-ma, Albert’s mother; if you say “one,”  she’ll say “tu!” Then on December 8th she said three, though it sounded more like “door,” but it follows one and two each time.

And the vocabulary keeps coming. With Curie we wrote down every word, but Elia keeps saying new things that we can’t keep up. One of the car games we play to limit screen time is to see what word Elia will say if you say it (an Elia claps for herself after every word). Curie loves it, and so Elia will repeat many words that she is just learning, but she is definitely making the association.She picked up a noodle and said “noodo,” and now when we ask her what she wants to eat, she says “noodo,” or “rice.” When she is hungry she says “eat,” when she wants to take a bath she says “bath” and starts to take off her clothes. She holds the camera and says “cheese,” and sits on her bike and says “bike.” In the morning if you say “good morning,” she will say “morning.”

She loves buses, and will say “bus” when a bus, van, or train comes by, and then follow it with “mine,” meaning that she loves them we think, or she actually believes they are hers. When she sees a train, she pumps one fist in the air and yells “tu-tu!” At school, she apparently says “not nice,” when something happens that is not in her favor. We hadn’t heard it at home, so it goes to show that there are things that she doesn’t like at school and is expressing herself – in fact the teacher said that she says it all the time. Now, Julie says that Elia is ahead of the other kids at school, and Elia does sit more quietly and behave; Erin saw this at the Thanksgiving lunch where Elia was the only one not knocking over her milk and plate.

Our favorite game is in the car recently. Albert will say “are we there yet?” And Curie and Elia will yell “No!” Every time. Even when we are not in the car, if you ask “are we there yet?” They will yell “no!” It makes for great pictures. If you receive our Holiday Card, that is how we got her to yell in Santa hat picture. She talks on the phone and calls Poppop, Erin’s dad by finding his picture on the phone and pushing it. She will say “hi papa,” answer yes and no questions, then say “bye, papa.” Erin’s dad has been a trooper taking the calls.

And it is not just her vocal development. She loves to dance, copies somersaulting from Curie, and loves to clean up after everyone after dinner, and wants Albert to toss her in the air and help her do flips.  She started scooping rice with her chopsticks at HotSPot, didn’t need to nurse on the plane, and loves to peel oranges (clementines). She is also not as afraid of “Speck,” the Hoaglands’ great dane as much as she used to be. She is more opinionated and will want to choose her food and will say “no,” when you suggest something she doesn’t want to do. Oh and she wants to wipe her own bum too.

Last month we reported that Elia’s favorite film was “Feast.” the other day Elia put took her bowl from the table and wanted to eat on the floor like the Winston in the movie. She pretends to be a dog and Curie pretends to be a cat.

Elia is the youngest cousin on Albert’s side of the family, and Erin’s sister has not had any children yet which means that the closest in age on Albert’s side is 8 years, and a minimum of 4 years on Erin’s side we estimate; so she is a bit in no man’s land for people to play with. Erin does have a cousin whose youngest is a year older than Elia, but the last time they met, that cousin took toys away from Elia and uncharacteristically pushed her down (admittedly this was when Elia was a one year old and could probably hold her own better now). Her parents said that the cousin normally doesn’t have kids smaller than her so it was an interesting circumstance.

Another thing happening is that Curie received a lot of gifts and toys that have become shared toys in the house. Elia has a slide, a bike, a car, etc…. and she does not hesitate to claim things as hers. But there are few things bought just for her. She has become aware of equality in gifts too, not in value yet, but in what she receives she was aware that Albert bought Curie a clippy doll and Elia the dried strawberries she loves, and while Albert was getting things that each loved, Elia was very aware that she did not receive a clippy doll (that had to be rectified later). So Curie got a play kitchen from IKEA when she was one, and a guitar when she was two. Elia did not get an iconic gift at one in the same way and we did not really know what to get her for her second birthday coming up. Then at Thanksgiving we were visiting Ed and Suephy’s house who were hosting this year and Curie fell in love with a rocking horse that while a little pricey, is totally worth it to see the joy in her face as she rode it. Since then, she has tried to ride the little white horse stuffed animal (smushing it, but undeterred she continued to ride it), and will point out horses in videos and stores when she gets a chance. So yes, we have a daughter who wants a pony.

Albert gets the winter blues because while people are taking the time to remember to be kind and caring, he wishes that it doesn’t take a holiday to make us remember. Another friend has the blues because trying to be thoughtful to everyone is like having everyone’s birthday on the same day and it is hard. We have tried to ask our friends and family to focus less on gifts and more on the spirit of the holidays. We are trying to move away from the commercialism, being caught by the obligation to buy to let people know they are important to us, paying much more for rush shipping to hit this arbitrarily magical day, we want to teach the values of kindness and caring year round, but we want the holidays to be so magical also. Curie is very much into Santa Claus and while this is an Elia blog, we want to share what we told both of them about Santa. Before we were married and before we had kids, we talked about whether we wanted our kids to believe in Santa, and the same concern applied: we didn’t want it to be about gifts, but we did want the magic to be there. So we decided this: Santa (person or concept) needs help to get to everyone because there are so many people, and because there are people who are not as fortunate as others, we (parents and kids) have to help Santa get the gifts and spread the holiday spirit. The other day we explained this to Curie, and you know what? She wanted to help Santa get gifts for our friends and more importantly said that she wanted to help Santa get the rocking horse for Elia’s birthday. Curie is more excited to give Elia the rocking horse than we are, and almost as much as Elia will be when she gets it. Most of the things you presuppose when you don’t have kids yet fall to the wayside when you do, but sometimes it works the way you planned. Happy Holidays.

What a remarkable thing to have your youngest daughter begin to have conversations with you. Elia will respond to questions and ask for things. An example might be when Curie asks to watch something and Elia will chime up with “mine!” meaning “how about me? Where is mine?” We respond with, “Elia would you like to watch too?” to which she says “yes.” “Would you like to watch Harry the Bunny?” She replies “Baby!” meaning “Babies (the French documentary which is her favorite movie – it was Curie’s too at a similar age),” or “Roh roh,” meaning “Feast” or “Ret Roh!” Meaning “Frozen.” She says “yea,'” “What do you say? Say ‘please,'” “P’eas.” “Okay, here you go, say ‘thank you,'” and she says “tu-tu.”

She says “mama” for “Ah-ma,” her maternal grandmother, and when Ah-ma says “do you know I love you?” Elia says, “yes.” She can say “Pa-pa” for “Pop-pop,” and “Anma” for “Grandmom.” She can repeat any word you say, she was yelling “cannonball!” when jumping into her playpen from the bed because Curie was yelling “cannonball!” while doing the same. We play a game in the car called “make Elia say a word,” where you say a word to try to get Elia to repeat it. Her vocabulary is approaching 50 we think.

Her conversation and communication has grown more sophisticated and specific as well. She will go up to Curie and make deliberate eye contact and ask her to do things “ji-ji, jump.” Or she will walk up to Curie and hold out her hand to hold hands when we ask them to while walking. She identifies the little blue push car as hers and the tricycle as Curie’s. When Albert got up at one point to get something, she held her hand out to catch him and push him back down and said “Da, no.” She is attached to Dada lately (Curie went through this phase too, Curie would stand at the top of the stairs and yell “A-Da!” For Albert, just as Erin would) and calls for “Da-da” a lot or will look at Erin and as “Da-da?” To ask where he is.

She is a daredevil still with no fear of any slide. While in California, she would slide down the steepest slides even when other older kids wouldn’t. And after coming down the scary slide she would have a scared look on her face and then ask for “mo” to do it again. Her favorite thing to do on the playground though is to climb up and down the stairs and walk across the bridges and shaky parts independently. We would follow her around the playground to spot her but she just wanted to walk up and down the stairs on her own.

As we said, for Halloween she was dressed up as Elsa like Curie and we would tell people that she was dressed up as Curie. Albert has taken to dressing them up in the same outfits which is something he was not going to do before we had kids. Elia uses more sign language than Curie did because her language development is more normal but because it is more normal, she is starting to act up a bit more as she enters the ‘terrible twos,” a time where kids get frustrated at not being able to communicate yet. Still it is pretty cute, she throws her tantrums flinging herself prostrate on the floor. She blows bubbles into her drink even though she is not supposed to because it is fun. If she doesn’t like a food or drink she has tried, she will just open her mouth and let the food slowly fall from it. She continues to take one bite of each thing and puts it back. She will push Curie down the slide at home if Curie sits too long at the top of the slide with her hands or her head, and she has to be warned not to try to climb up the slide and go around time and again as she tests her boundaries.

At 20 months she has learned to jump to get some air and then land on her butt. She learned to do this on the trampoline but will do it on a bed, or a couch, or a floor with equal abandon. And because Curie has started jumping off stairs Elia does as well – okay one stair but still scary for he parents. Both Curie and Elia like to sit on top of our couch which has a high back and fling themselves off to land on the seats. It was very scary at first, but it is now commonplace for them to do. When Elia would land Erin would make some remark of concern and she would cover her mouth with both hands and laugh rocking back and forth. This was so cute we had to make a video of it.

We should have taken more video and need to take more video. We do a good job documenting our children’s lives through photographs and entries (though we need to go back and write more for Curie’s early ones), but when we unearth a video from even a few months ago, we are reminded of the joy in the timber of their voice and the reactions in the split seconds as they encounter new things. We have a clip or two from here or there (and we know we have lost more than a few), but we need to do a better job capturing some of these memories, or soon all we will have are pictures and unreliable memories to go with them. All of this is because we know that when you have kids, it isn’t so much the beginning of family, but a twenty-year block that you get them, and then they become their own people and have their own families and after that you are alone with each other again and all you have are appropriate, and hopefully often, phone calls and visits, your memories captured in whatever way you did and however you saved them, and, of course, the love in your hearts.