June means the end of school and the beginning of camp, and the end of second grade for Curie also means the end of preschool for Elia. The girls went back to the dentist and while Elia was okay Curie had more work to do including losing another tooth. When the day came, and she had her tooth extracted the same day Elia graduated from preschool, they ended up extracting two teeth. It was terrible, and while Curie bounced back the next day, she was miserable even as she was helping celebrate Elia’s graduation. Curie (and Albert) have a fear of the dentist and so the night before Curie went to the dentist, Albert spent some time teaching her box breathing to control her anxiety before going to the dentist. Afterward she told Albert (because Erin takes them to the dentist), that she did the breathing, and hopefully having something to concentrate on helped her that day.
Curie was so proud to graduate from second grade and on the last weeks had the opportunity to have some time in the day with Albert for a second date and got to pick up Elia twice (something Elia had asked for and with her graduating preschool was important to do before she did). Albert and Curie went to Wasabi together, and had lunch together at the counter. They then went to the Lego store and bought twelve minifigs representing the the family and Erin’s extended family – plus a few imaginary people. As part of her day, she wanted to go see all the things that Elia talks about when Albert drives her home, the little Target, the little store, the grocery store. So part of Curie’s date was to walk around Albert’s work, visit his work and then go pick up Elia. Elia was so excited that Curie came and then when Curie came again at the end of her last day of school Elia was so happy.
Curie passed her green belt with stripe, but since she is going to Congo camp won’t get her belt until the next year. We had been afraid that she wouldn’t be able to break her board (we had seen a boy not be able to break his board on Curie’s first test) that Albert bought a re-breakable board for practice. We needn’t have worried since she was able to break her board on the first try.
This summer we started putting out bird food and we had squirrels eat the food, so Albert got squirt bottles to shoo them away. Though for the kids he makes the joke “pants” instead of “shoo/shoe”. Curie and Elia have taken to wanting to squirt the squirrels, even coming running when there is a squirrel on the deck, just saying we see a squirrel has them come running and grabbing their bottles. The first time Curie went after a squirrel though, she was by herself and Albert was telling her to squirt the squirrel. The squirrel was hanging on the bird feede sixteen feet above the ground and in the past when Albert would squirt them the squirrel would go to the other side and the jump back on the deck. Curie, however, is a dead shot with the water bottle and when she hit the squirrel in the face with the first shot, the squirrel did go to the other side ready to jump. Curie in her focus simply pivoted and hit the squirrel again on the other side and repeated until the squirrel lost its grip and fell. Albert was stunned and ran to the railing to see if the squirrel was okay. The squirrel sat dazed for a while and then finally moved away. Who knew Curie would be so accurate, it was single unerring shots with no misses.
We have been going to our favorite places, Little Sheep Hot Pot, Urban Hot Pot, Ramen Factory 42 with the green bike fun, we got to see Steve again at Peter Chang’s and Duck Donuts and hiked in Woodbridge with Erin’s parents. Curie has found that she likes ramen more than udon, a major shift in her eating preferences because we have been planning a vacation to Japan to eat a lot of ramen, and to this point it had been Curie udon and Elia ramen.
Albert built the kids the Chengineering Doll House, Curie played fashion designer and dressed Elia, and hair stylist doing Elia’s hair. They got SpiderGwen costumes and wore them for a day. They played veterinarians for a while with kits from JC Penny. They are generally silly right before bed, play really well together, and only fight on occasion. We still get whining and petulant faces, but we are working on it and emphasizing that crying won’t get them what they want.
We are worried about Curie’s reading but she is interested in creating her own books. Curie has a disconnect between her reading and her writing so Albert has taken to encouraging her to write more methodically and neater. We think she doesn’t listen to the sounds of the words when she reads so when she reproduces them she misses vowels and consonants.
At Elia’s friend Sloane’s birthday party at the pool, Curie was sunning herself on an oversized chair and looked so much like her future teenage girl. We had a moment of fleeting-ness around it but at the same time we know that we love watching them grow. So much right now is appreciating the moment and being grateful for what we have. She is trying so hard to grow up and we are watching it go by so fast that we forget to slow down on occasion and just be together. So the dishes aren’t done, so the laundry isn’t done, so we aren’t looking at our email, if we could take that time and make our kids happy for another moment. that is worth it, that is life at its best.