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.
For school, Curie has been taking her tests without home practice since the class no longer provides advanced notice of the tests (theoretically Curie is supposed to tell us we suppose). She does well for the most part, has trouble writing still, but is doing great in school. Erin chaperoned the Natural History Museum field trip with her class and they had a great time together on the bus and in the museum. Albert and Elia did not go along this time, nor did we go to her other field trip to Frying Pan park, which was a farm. Curie asked why is it called a park if it is a farm.
We let the girls wear their Easter dresses a week early to get pictures at Brookside garden. Last year we went there when the tulips were in full bloom, but this year we were a little too early to see all the flowers, we saw a few, but the better part was the cherry blossoms that were still blooming. The funny thing is though we brought the dresses instead of letting them wear them because we did not want them to get dirty when we got lunch. For lunch, we found Urban Hot Pot and went to a Rita’s which was great since the one around our house and at Potomac Mills had closed down.
We did go back to the Little Gym by Peter Chang’s for Chloe’s Birthday but this time we did get to go to Duck Donuts and try the freshly fried donuts there. We reintroduced the girls to Five Guys, where Curie buys naked hot dogs and Elia eats just the beef patty of the hamburger. Other notable restaurant trips were back to Tim’s where Elia drew her first picture of a girl in the Curie-like style, Curie, who had been teaching her was so proud. We also went to Clydes as a family when Alice visited.
The kids had a great time seeding our backyard, which after the deck building was very bare, but with a lot of help from the girls and our neighbor Natalie, we put mulch seed mix and seed all over and the girls got excited to see the grass sprout and grow. We luckily had a lot of rain and we quickly got a pretty good lawn, lush at times after the rain, a lot of weeds, clover and such but very green. The phrase watching grass grow did not mean we were bored watching for us, instead it was exciting to grow a lawn that the kids like playing on. We do have this little weed whacker lawn mower that is tiny but does the job, and we do use this backyard more than any of the previous two houses on Shootingstar or Armistead, largely because of the deck and lawn.
We went back out to Lake Burke for the first time this year, Elia has had a fear of bugs so did not want to be out there too long, but we had a really nice time seeing the herons nest up at the top of the trees, and letting the kids drive around the boats. Curie broke her first board in class at EMA, lost three teeth and told Erin not to say, “knock on wood.” When we asked her what we should say, she replied, “jazz hands!”
For spring break we did not plan well so spontaneously took a trip, first to Urban Hot Pot, then back to Brookside Gardens. Curie posed and did jumping splits, while Elia got tired and and stayed in the wagon. When Elia fell asleep Curie took special care to pull the wagon and take care of her. We were crazily all dressed in black and the flowers were out making a nice contrast. For dinner we went to a new sushi conveyor belt restaurant in Maryland. The next day the girls wore Hermione twin dresses, we went to the Please Touch Museum, and ate at Yamazuki Ramen in Philadelphia. That night we met up with Reggie’s family, and had great pizza. The last day we went back to Yamazuki with the Yischons and made it home to get lavender plants at Costco and have an Easter egg hunt in our back yard with Natalie.
Something that Erin lets Albert do is to take Curie every morning if possible to the bus stop. Next year we will go with both girls as Elia goes to kindergarten, but for this year they get to have a little special time together, not unlike Albert’s time with Elia in the car. Most of the time they are running to catch the bus, but they also get a chance to just walk holding hands and spending a couple minutes before the bus comes.