Recently, Albert told Curie that the first song he ever sang to her the day she was born was “You’re the Inspiration” by Chicago and she wanted to dance with him (they apparently have been learning to formally dance at school). Albert danced on his knees and Curie rested her head on his chest. Albert unshaven, without hair product, in an undershirt and shorts and still magical. Then, later in the night, right before bedtime, she wanted to do it again.
There are days Curie asks us to pick her up, and though there are days that she feels too heavy, we also have friends whose children are becoming teenagers or going to college, and we are pressed to think, how many more times will we be able to pick her up and hold her?
She is growing up, she will tell us matter-of-factly, and taking responsibility, “it’s my fault” after accidentally hitting Elia. She recognized that certain foods did not hurt her mouth when she had hand foot mouth disease, and later when her four-year molars started coming in. It was because she was cognizant of that, that she cried so much, disappointed that even the ice cream and cookies she was banking on still hurt her mouth. The one benefit of hand-foot-mouth, is that Curie stopped sucking her thumb finally.
There are a lot of influences at school bearing on her too. One night she said “books are boring,” which shocked us. “Who told you this?” She mentioned that a girl at school told her. Not wanting this to be a core memory (a la Inside Out), Albert read books that she liked and taught her how to respond if the girl said it again: “you just haven’t read the right book,” which she uses if we ask her if books are boring. The book she loves the most right now is an old one called Show Me. In it you learn where your nose is etc… Albert, however, has turned it into an irritating game where in cahoots the two of them and Elia go and find the parts on Mommy including all the nuzzling and tickling. Erin is a good sport about it, and it made Curie love books again. “Where is your nose? Is that where it grows? Let me nuzzle your nose.” Fortunately it ends with a big hug, so it is all right.
Along the same lines, some of her best friends made up an arbitrary rule that only the girl with the longest dress can be Elsa from Frozen. At first Curie was just asking for big dresses, which we couldn’t figure out after all the Superman shirts. Then when she told us, we taught her to tell the girl that all of them could be Elsa, it took some doing, but it worked and now she can be Elsa whenever she wants. The other girl has also decided to stand up and be Elsa as well. Curie wants to be “bad Elsa,” the one with the magic powers.
With her birthday coming up, we experimented with a number of things to see if she would like them. We went ice skating (she pushed a Home Depot bucket around to keep standing and balanced), and loved it, but we realized that not all parents would be able to ice skate and keep an eye on their kids, so we picked bowling (Curie calls it “balling”) and took the kids to try it out. The first time Curie had just woken from a nap and didn’t want to play (though she did want to play video games). Elia loved it (see her blog for her reaction, it is priceless). The second time Curie loved it so much she played four games straight. And as for the video games, we pulled out our Wii and have started playing Mario Kart again. Erin was happy.
As we posted earlier, Erin’s parents took us to Thomas Land, which was magical for the kids. While there she told Erin’s mom that she had made the scrambled eggs wrong because “my Daddy doesn’t make them like that,” and wouldn’t eat them (we stopped putting milk in scrambled eggs after reading a cooking blog, they do taste better that way). Curie has also started baking boxed cakes and brownies. She and Elia love mixing.
Our daily life is pretty busy and we feel run down all the time, but it is still amazing and heart-filling. The Chen Engineering company keeps making huge track layouts, Curie makes up names and words for things: pho and egg rolls are noodle-doodles with egamaroles, supersoup, and meatballmaballs. She calls tofu, “toh-food,” and most magnificently has named her Uncle Steve, “Weird Beard,” because of his beard. She only wants showers with Albert now and her bath toys have not been played with for some time – she likes showers because she doesn’t get water in her face when washing her hair (unlike Elia, who would put her face in the water as the first thing). Curie and Erin are the same in the no-water-in-the-face respect.
Albert has allowed Elsa because she is a queen and not a princess and works with Curie not to need to be saved as a princess, but recently having seen Frozen and Frozen Fever, we have introduced Mulan and Pocahontas whom she identified tremendously with because “we have the same hair!” So as a result we also introduced Lilo and Stitch, which we saw in its entirety.
Yes. Curie is growing up and almost four. Soon she will be out of pre-school and in kindergarten and we get emotional thinking about how proud we are that she is growing and emotional at how fast it is going. It means we need to relish and embrace every moment: the night of the Perseid meteor shower, Erin, Curie, and I lay on the front stoop while Elia was asleep upstairs and stared at the stars. And recently, Curie scratched her leg at school and pointed out her injury. Then she got her First Baby book (which we never filled out) and brought it to us. “Remember?” She asked. Albert was perplexed until Erin explained it to him: Albert had explained to Curie that the First Baby book was a scrapbook, but she had not understood and thought he had said “scratchbook” and had been wanting to catalog every scratch she had received. How wonderful is that? Now we have to get her a scratchbook so that she can do just that!