“It’s snot, It’s not. It’s NOT! It’s SNOT! It’s not snot, It’s NOT! It’s SNOT!” This is Albert and Elia’s conversation for almost 20 minutes in the car driving Curie nuts, driving Erin nuts. “It’s snot….” Peals of laughter goading each other on. “It’s not…” Doesn’t matter where or when, they will start and get frustrated protests from the other two. If Elia is upset or crying or anything, Albert just has to make a potty joke and she will burst out laughing. And if you say anything like “It’s not funny…” Watch out because you may just start them off again.
It’s the December blog for Elia, which means we are talking about Thanksgiving and the end of November for her. It’s confusing, we know. So like Curie, the photos from the EMA photoshoot came back and they were worth getting, we don’t often get to see the girls in uniform, other than at belt testing, so it was nice to have pictures of them without trying to take pictures with the other kids. Now, while writing this, we realize that we could easily ask them to bring home their uniforms for washing and take pictures, so I guess we did not spend the $160 that well. Shows you how much we wash their uniforms.
The trip to Rockville was eye-opening for us about Elia’s choices of toys and presents. She has in the past chosen a Belle dress over the Belle doll, starting an entire year of wearing Belle dresses. This time it was Frixion markers over other dolls or toys. There is a part of Elia that plays with dolls and loves them, but there is a part of her that is like Albert being an early larper instead of playing Dungeons and Dragons, that the practical of doing something is more interesting than simulating it even though both are make-believe. In any case, watching both girls use the markers at MOD and making a picture for the manager reminded us of the importance of the basics over screen time or even toys. Oh and Hot Pot City was very good.
It does seem that Elia has been going to more birthday parties than Curie lately, which may be largely because she is in kindergarten and there are fewer birthday parties at third grade, but we have no proof of this yet. In late November to early December Elia went to two parties with Curie staying with Albert rather than go to one of Elia’s friend’s parties. When we picked up Elia, she was playing mostly with Garrett who was just starting to be more prevalent in Elia’s discussions at the time. Afterwards we had Ramen with the Hoaglands, and Elia lost her Daisy’s doll’s hand from Five and Below.
So Elia is talking about Garrett so much that we end up inviting their family to see Frozen 2 with us in the theater. We go to Hoffman on opening night, where we haven’t been in forever. The kids all sit together with Albert then Erin, then Garrett, then Elia, then Curie, then Andrew, then Joe and Lisa, Garrett and Andrew’s parents. Julie and her friend sat in front of us. By the end the girls were in our laps for the scary and sad parts, but before that? Elia put her arm around Garrett in the dark and they sat together on a little date. The two of them were adorable. Garrett did talk to Erin the whole movie, and Curie and Erin did miss <spoiler> Olaf’s death during a bathroom break. Not to worry though we would see it two more times.
The rest of November was watching Elia intent on Ring Fit! The kids taking Albert to Sky Zone in anticipation for Elia’s birthday party, Elia drawing for Popop before their visit, playing with Curie’s friend Natalie in the park and Elia covering Albert’s back with “Hello My Name is…” name tag stickers on his back. A notable is when we came home one night Elia wanted to help Albert in the kitchen, which is usually something Curie wants to do, so we were eager to let Elia do it to be more involved with the cooking. The meal that night was ribs though, so much more than cutting potatoes, or cutting mushrooms. Well Elia loved it, she wore an apron, cut raw meat, basted them with barbeque sauce and made ribs! We do pressure cooker ribs finished on the grill. Curie did feel like she also wanted to help so she and Erin made peppermint Oreo bark for dessert.
Thanksgiving was in Atlanta, and Elia did not feel as left out this time, this may be because both Bernard and Suephy talked to their kids, or the other cousins being older and more tolerant, or that Elia was simply older and more able to follow the kids around and play with them, or play by herself. The pool table and foosball table helped quite a bit. The only thing was that Albert’s mom did not get as much Elia time as a result. We will have to rectify that. We did see Frozen 2 with Albert’s family and even though there was the incident with Albert’s dad getting locked out of the theater, we generally had a good time. Dylan and Eleanor are in musical theater, so they really liked it. Albert’s mom asks us to get the kids’ presents on her behalf and so the grandparents on Albert’s side gave the girls Anna and Elsa dresses that they wore at Suephy’s house and for the movie. Thanksgiving also means Black Friday, so we bought Pixel 4s, which is significant because that means the girls also get upgrades as the Pixel 2s, which are in pretty good shape (Erin’s phone issues turn out to be able to be resolved by clearing her clock cache), become the kids’ phones, which is much more reliable than the HTC One M9s (Albert’s needed a Pixel 2 upgrade much earlier in the summer).
The beginning of December means holiday card pictures with Santa hats for our annual Christmas/holiday card. The girls wore blue holiday dresses this year that we had bought much earlier and the girls, Elia in particular, kept wanting to wear them. By the time we let them wear them, they did for the picture and then the dresses have not really gotten into their rotation for dresses they want to wear.
Elia had a runny nose during the trip to Atlanta for Thanksgiving and afterward, Bernard and Jared reported getting sick. Erin got sick too right when Albert went to Cleveland on a business trip. This is not to say Elia was patient zero – in fact, the evidence is to the contrary as Elia would get the flu at the end of December. It is possible that Erin got sick from a work colleague and Bernard maybe on the airplane and Jared in another way, but at the time Elia was patient zero. Erin would stay sick for a month.
We had a great time at the EMA Holiday party where we sat with Garrett and his family. We saw the EMA Panda and bought our potluck desserts. It was our first time there and we went last minute. It was very weird to see all the instructors all decked out, especially Master Jasmine. We also got to see a lot more tattoos than we were used to on them.
The girls got their haircuts, we put out Frosty and Olaf, and trimmed the tree. Curie went to Isabella’s birthday party, notable because, this time Elia chose not to go to Curie’s friend’s party and she and Albert went to run errands at Target and go to Dave and Buster’s instead. They brought back Eevee and Pickachu headbands. We discover Oh My Hotpot in Annandale, which becomes Erin’s second favorite hotpot place, displacing 99 C Hotpot as our go to place to bring people (Little Sheep Hot Pot is still our favorite, though we do not go for a while because of Oh My Hot Pot).
We end the month with Elia’s birthday party, which is at SkyZone with friends from school and preschool. Elia loves being center of attention and she loved playing with everyone, though largely with some of her friends from school. Agnes comes, as does Lucy and Nora. Elia loves having Garrett and Victor, and Patrick all sitting near her. Curie has Natalie, Chloe, and Isabella there (not to mention Andrew and Natalie from our neighborhood) and they make up the “older kid table” and help take care of the kids. The theme of the party was “Love” with hearts, roses, and engagement rings. Elia wore a heart dress, and a crown she made at camp over the summer. She kept saying she hopes Garrett asks her to marry him. Notably she said that Garret called her his girlfriend, but then did go on to call his brother his boyfriend. Elia received a lot of presents and she was magnanimous about letting Curie help her open them. Curie took the the Baby Alive. Elia just likes opening the presents. We can’t believe she is six, but she is still our little girl.