It is always quite something to write at the end of the year. There are Christmas posts and birthdays and all sorts of things like travel and family and such. Interestingly there is little time for reflection; however, we had a revelation recently about a Curie/Elia dynamic that was proving to be interesting. We had been noticing how cute Elia is seeing her make her way growing up that we had seemed to have missed a bit with Curie. We had attributed this to Curie’s early diction where we did not see Curie’s making her way with her language. But the revelation we have had recently is that when Curie was turning three, Elia was just born, an infant, and we simply were overwhelmed to appreciate everything at the time. Don’t get me wrong, by reading older posts, looking at pictures, and watching videos we loved Curie at the age, but simply did not have the ability to appreciate it as much as we do now.
We have also noticed that Curie is a little jealous still of the attention that Elia gets (as all first born kids get), and we are learning to be careful when complementing Elia to make sure we have parallel compliments for Curie – a thought while writing this is that we need to make sure we do the same for Elia when we compliment Curie. There is a tendency to think that Curie knows she is so smart and capable, but we have to remember that that needs reinforcement.
Curie loves kindergarten and is doing great (so far, as a parent you are constantly wary), and loved it even more when Mommy volunteered at her school. Albert really needs to do the same. She also thinks that Liam is dreamy; Albert needs to find out who this Liam is. 🙂
She has become quite sassy as of late, something we are proud of. She was explaining how she didn’t want something to Erin, and in passing Albert agreed with Curie to which she said “Thanks Dada!” In a Steve Martin, well “Thaaank you!” kind of tone. Sassy. She also told Erin to scoot over when trying to sit together in the living room chair, she said that Mommy has a bigger butt than Dada, but a smaller head. Sassy. We have always known she was willful and now sassy is a part of that. Albert has been getting kick out of mispronouncing her martial arts form that she is doing, it is called Ki Ban Yan part 1, but Albert calls it Ban Ki Moon part 1 every time to make Curie correct him. Albert is almost certainly the role model source for her sassiness. More on sass, when we write Elia’s post later. Sassy, I tell you, it is fantastic.
We have blogged how we went to California for the holidays and took Curie and Elia to Disneyland and how even though it was so expensive and you feel gouged, it is offset by the “magic” for the kids. Curie was so proud to be exactly 40″ and riding Star Tours, her first big kid ride. She was obsessed with going up Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and was looking for Aurora. She ended up buying a Rapunzel doll instead because of a rule that she made up. You can only buy a doll of a character you actually met there, and she had seen the Rapunzel show in the park next to the castle.
We saw Moana with Curie and interestingly her favorite character was Te Fite, the island more than Moana or Maui. She and Elia agree that the movie was too scary, but<Spoiler Alert> Curie loves the twist ending and what it represents. She watches a pirated clip of that moment on “Eggs (You Tube)” a lot. She also loves singing the songs from the movie but has no desire to rewatch it in the theater. We also bought Beauty and the Beast and that was also too scary so we watched the 30 minutes of nice parts to the end which she loved. She and Elia loved the trailer for the live action as well.
Curie could stand to eat more, and eat more protein, grinds her teeth when she sleeps, is sassy as mentioned before, can tend to whine or get fussy when she is tired, but works really hard on being beautiful – our definition is, again, anyone who smiles is pretty, and beauty comes from within. She will voluntarily give Elia things Elia wants even if it is the only or last one and looks to us for recognition of her actions (there are other times of course where she does not share, but that is normal), which is pretty amazing.