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The Chen Engineering Company

Recently Erin instituted mandatory play at the house to curb screen time which has resulted in bringing the slide and basketball hoop from the basement to the living room for Elia and Curie to play, there is piano playing, drawing, painting, pig pile on Mommy, elephant and horsey rides and all manners of roughhousing that you might imagine for an almost four and a one-and-a-half year old.

But there is a little bit of time when Elia and Erin go up for a bath that becomes Daddy and Curie engineering time where Curie’s imagination gets to run wild and Albert helps her make her ideas a reality (Elia is still in the knocking-down-is-more-fun-than-the-frustration-of-not-being-able-to-build-yet phase – though she has started playing trains without tearing up the track). To be fair, Erin has long built houses with Curie ever since she was a toddler. The reason for this post though is that in recent months Curie has become much more dextrous in her ability to build and create.

We have three train sets, a Duplo one, a wooden Thomas/Chuggington/IKEA/Brio set, and a VTech track from Shawn and Chris and Cy and Librada. Erin’s father and Curie had a great time building tracks, but here is a recent Chen Engineering Company production:

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If you haven’t played with Kapla, they are precisely cut blocks of all the same shape that you build in to amazing things. They used to be very expensive, but recently Ikea started making their own. Curie wanted to build a house for her Playmobil, Octonaut, and Frozen figures to live. One thing led to another and here we are:

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There are Lego sets that are amazing recreations of things from the VW Camper van to the Star Destroyer to architectural sets, essentially models made of Lego. But Lego and Duplo were really about creativity back in the day. We have a Duplo set that Suephy and Ed handed down to us that Curie and Elia play with. The other night Curie wanted to build a restaurant so here is a table with nine chairs, a stair case to the oven (where we were cooking Sven and Pabbi – don’t ask), and Joy and Sadness as Giants were looking on. If you look carefully Sir Topham Hat and some strawberry girl were eating with two Playmobil people. The trees were from a previous project:

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Elia July 2015

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Elia July 2015. What an irresistible little girl. She listens and understands, you talk and she responds, just that little communication has been amazing. The cutest thing has been that she has learned to nod – for those of you without kids, or those of you who have forgotten, nodding is a learned response, and until now, Elia had always shaken her head for “yes” or “no.” Curie nodded with her whole head pivoting at the base of her neck and her shoulders going up when her head went down, sometimes she still does. Elia nods more deliberately nodding with her whole torso with a dip of her chin usually with one single nod rather than the bobbing of the head you would be used to.

Elia’s non-verbal communication has become more sophisticated; in addition to nodding, she points more deliberately: when she sits down, she will point next to her to insist that you sit next to her. She also signs with more meaning: for instance, two index fingers together now means milk specifically.  But it is her verbal communication that is starting to pick up now: she babbles full sentences, and in the most recent days she says “ro ro” for train or rail road, and after her experience in the Beach ball pit, says “ah-bub-ble” for those balls. Upon sliding down the slide, she will say “again, again” or a reasonable facsimile of that.

Most impressive is her musicality. She will sing back little snippets of the Echo song and ABC’s and if you play music she will try to sing along. She pumps her fists to a good beat and has started to twirl to “Let it Go;” at first just holding her hand over her head like a ballerina teetering back and forth, and now in the last few days, will actually turn when the music comes on.

On the Elia Project front: early in the month she started waking up waking up with a dry diaper and waited to potty. She will go if you put her on the potty regularly now and will go reflexively if you put her on the seat. To note, she potties better with Albert than Erin right now, but that could simply be because he spends more time at it than Erin.

Elia has become far more assertive and opinionated now insisting on things and crying dramatically when she can’t have them. She slides down the slide by herself and understands that you have to walk around and go up the stairs again for a second turn, however if Curie is in the way she will try to squeeze by her or if Curie is already at the top of the slide, Elia will push Curie down the slide so that she can have her turn. Curie thinks it is hilarious – fortunately (not so hilarious was their big fight over an umbrella).

Elia’s memory has always been remarkable, but recently we have seen it in action in new ways, she practically flipped out when she saw a merry-go-round in the mall – even though she hadn’t ridden a merry-go-round in months, and when we were in New York riding the ferris wheel in Toys R Us two months after we had ridden it for the first time she pointed with a very worried look on her face while in line at a specific car she wanted to ride (on our first ride we spent the time in line talking about which car we would get). On the topic of Times Square, there are panhandlers there now dressed up as giant babies; this blew Elia’s mind. She pointed very deliberately making strong vocalizations that all was not right with the world.

Elia had to stay home from school with Albert one day recently and the two of them had a daddy-daughter day. After that day, she now loves to be picked up by Albert, and when Curie wants to be picked up by Mommy and she is already holding Elia, Elia voluntarily will reach out for Albert to switch. It is adorable to watch and irresistible for Albert. We spend our times making memories of moments in anticipation of the days when most of our lives are behind us, and these will be left, the pictures we take every day, and the hours we spend writing these moments down document these, the best days of our lives.

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Curie June 2015

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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.

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Julie and Steve 2015

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I really like this group of pictures, but it is proof-positive that photography is most often about timing and luck.  I separate the two because timing implies some measure of skill.

After timing I usually have a debate with my fellow photographers about whether it is, experience, skill or equipment that comes next. Because so much of my shooting style relies on it, I am usually on the equipment camp next. Their argument for skill/experience/talent is that a good photographer could shoot great shots with any camera, this is true (this was a Canon S120 point and shoot held at arms length without looking at the LCD screen), but having the right equipment at the right time can make the shot so much better. “The best camera is the one you have on you.”