Curie March 2015. Someone wrote recently that the things empty-nesters wish they had taken a picture of was the mundane things, like the dining table everyone ate at or the nightlight the kids used. The big trips and events were great, but to remember the little things was key. Jerry Seinfeld says you should write all the funny things your kids say in a book, because though you think you will remember it all, you don’t. And as these posts get longer and longer on each girl, we realize that there were so many things we should have written about Curie that we didn’t.
When Curie just started being mobile she would feel things for their texture, especially horizontal surfaces, and she would put her palms up against the edge and scratch at the surface with her finger tips learning what this new feeling was. This has been floating in Albert’s mind a lot recently because Elia is similarly discovering so many new things for the first time, and yet we didn’t write it down when Curie was growing up (or if we did, we have forgotten). You can’t write everything down, but this exercise of taking a picture every day makes us feel like we could do a better job remembering for when we are old and empty-nesters ourselves. Erin and I both have one or two pictures for entire years of some of our childhoods (our parents probably have many more in their houses) and it is the pictures that often determine how we remember what happened, that is why this picture-a-day has become so important to us.
Family is becoming much more important to Curie, there is a sense of not-all-being-there when we are not all together she feels. Albert tends to pass out on the couch instead of going to bed and recently Curie has been insisting that he come up to bed so that we can “all be a family.” Elia delights her where she will find ways to play with her, or want to hug her, or kiss her, or play with her feet, or wrestle (not the neck Curie) with her. She makes it a point to kiss Elia when giving kisses to us, and when we have Elia kiss us, she insists on one for herself.
We are making progress on whining and frustration, and the Olaf bag with blind bags has transformed into Easter eggs with figurines from Curie’s favorite shows. Now to be fair, Albert lets her open as many as she needs to to find the one she wants and then they close all the other ones back up and put them back in the bag for future openings. Perhaps not the original idea, but it works and gets her the one she is looking for. She has done some funny things with her figurines, with Captain Barnacle she insisted on holding him when watching Octonauts and held him up every time Captain Barnacle appeared. The next day she wanted Dashi and had Captain Barnacle kiss Dashi when she was bitten by a shark playing with Albert, we thought it was a cute romantic twist until she also got Peso (called “Queso”) and she had Captain Barnacle kiss him too – maybe it is progressive.
Curie loves Play Doh, and wants to play it (notice play it, not play with it) every day, she loves watching the nan and tortilla makers make bread at our local kabob and Mexican places and uses the full sized rolling pins on her Play Doh. At a recent children’s museum trip she started playing with regular sized Legos (technically the bigger ones are Duplos – which BTW Albert just discovered that they are compatible and you can put Legos on Duplos – it was mind blowing), and Elia went from the huge ones from Mega Blocks to Duplos.
Because it is spring it is hard to remember that the month started with a snow storm and right before, Albert had bought Curie a snow shovel. Curie LOVES to shovel snow and clean off the car – until that is, her glove comes off and her hand gets too cold. She also started out-growing her boots, so we took advantage of the return policy that you really shouldn’t do, and returned the boots at REI within the year and got her a larger size (first, for those of you looking down your nose, someone is going to get fantastic almost perfect boots for their kid at the next attic/garage sale, AND REI is getting free advertising for their fantastic return policy right now), but since they didn’t have her size in the boots she had, we swapped them up for some BOGs which both Albert and Erin wanted for themselves. BOGs have cut out handles that make it very easy to pull on, and are perfect. The thing is this, we got her first boots on sale for $32 which were $50 boots. The BOGS were on sale for $49 and we said, hey why not – but they are normally $74 dollars. So Curie is wearing essentially $80 boots ($78 at L.L. Bean). What kid gets $80 boots?
Elia and Curie are playing a lot more now. They will share a sippy cup and actually give it back to each other. The other thing is we are finally using our expensive tricycle which as you can see, has a tandem attachment. Normally Curie won’t ride a stroller or vehicle for longer than a couple of minutes before wanting to be carried, but this time they rode the whole way there and back. Something wonderful is happening.
At the end of the month Bernard visited, and generally, Albert’s family sees us less because of distance so it was a treat. For days Curie was excited that Uncle Bernard was visiting. She worked very hard on a card for him and harder on an envelope that had his name on it (as close as she could get with Erin’s instruction) she then decorated it with a ton of puffed letter stickers. The nicest thing was when Bernard read to Curie and then to Elia and it reminded us how important family is and not just your immediate family.