For New Year’s Eve we did not go over to the Hoaglands for the first time in years because they were away diving in South Africa. We instead had the Tamanahas over for New Year’s Eve. As a Christmas gift, they brought over a game where you had to try not to step into the poo, which was a great hit. The kids stayed up for New Years and we took our first picture of the year. Albert opened his Solo Stove Bonfire and we found out how hard it was to actually light a good fire without some practice, but Curie loved the marshmallows.
As reported in Elia’s blog, Elia chose Jumpin’ Joey’s for her birthday party because Curie’s friends were too big to come to Busy Bees. It does mean that really we have outgrown Busy Bees which is a little sad. Curie invited a number of friends but only Natalie and Lucy were able to come. Still they had a great time at Elia’s party. Curie and Natalie helped Elia blow out her candles which made Elia upset, so we did it all over again with everyone and relit the candles so that Elia could blow them out herself. As reported, Alice and Derek were coming through town and were able to make Elia’s party.
We saw Into the Spiderverse which is a fairly scary movie for our kids, but they had seen a lot of trailers and except for a few parts, really loved it. Albert bought Miles Morales and Spider Gwen action figures for the kids and they brought them to the movie. Elia gravitated to Miles and Curie gravitated to Gwen. Both kids talked about being them for Halloween next year.
The next day we had a snow storm and the kids love snow. Mostly they want to eat it, but this time after working on the cars, we went for a walk and found kids sledding. Curie really wanted to go sledding, while Elia wanted to shovel some more. Elia hit Albert with a snowball in the head, and Curie went sledding the entire time, really enjoying the ride. We did have a play date with Natalie and Chloe, two of Curie’s friends from Bright Horizons. We met up at Pizza Paradisio in Old Town where we not only had dinner, but also ice cream before going home.
The days are largely school and work repeated and the kids wanting to play at home on the weekends. Curie still needs work on her writing and reading, but it is improving. Her math, science, and history though are progressing very well. Erin has worked with Curie on reading and history and Curie has been able to get 4s on her tests on in history on the different Indians. Albert has been working with Curie on science and math, teaching her more traditional ways of solving problems and also more creative ways of solving problems to also get 3s and 4s on her tests. We most definitely need to work on her writing though since she reads the beginning of the word and then guesses the rest on the word and context. The problem is that she is guessing without listening and sounding out the word. In writing, not sounding it out means that she is not working out how to spell her words – we are needing to add a new way to help her work out how to spell.
The Hoaglands gave Curie Bella’s old coat and in a single day, Curie’s coat became the black coat they gave her and Elia’s coat became Curie’s purple coat. It is odd because we have associated Curie with the purple coat so it is interesting to see Elia in it. At the end of the month, Albert went on a trip with Erin traveling immediately after. We asked Julie to help take care of the kids because the trips overlapped. It is very interesting how much we miss the kids even for a day. Also at the end of the month Albert and the kids drew a number of pictures resulting in some posed pictures and some new drawings of the kids by Albert.
These are challenging times for work, for double rent and mortgage, for little anxieties that come with life, but it is the kids that get us by, it is family that gets us by. Ironically the kids are both the saving grace and a source of worry. We finally went to get flu shots but had to do them at Giant and with Curie’s fear of shots, it was challenging and heart wrenching to get her to get it.
Curie is definitely growing in height and in development. She needs to have more calcium and eat more – Elia reported a 40th percentile at her last doctor’s visit. Curie had a third tooth that is wiggly, and lost the tooth in January, The tooth fairy gave two dollars per tooth so Curie has collected six dollars to date for her teeth. She keeps all the money in an LOL container which is interesting since she ha had money before that she has not kept, but somehow this money is more important because she earned it. Elia said that she did not get any money because she has not lost a tooth. Curie without hesitating, gave Elia one of her dollars. What a wonderful person she is becoming.