Curie September 2015

Learning what it means to be pretty and what it means to be beautiful. Curie turned four this month, and received a doll for her birthday, Sleeping Beauty, in fact. Erin is against this type of “hard doll” for the impossible body type impression it can make on a girl, so we re-gifted it. Curie was only okay with it because Aurora is a princess, and as we have mentioned Curie is working on being a queen or king. Well, Elsa is a queen and Curie is a little fixated on replacing her Aurora with an Elsa “hard doll,” specifically in the “bad Elsa dress ( the blue one).”

So we are at the Disney store where Curie has an Elsa hard doll clasped in her arms asking to buy it. While Erin takes Elia to the restroom to be changed, Albert has a long conversation with Curie that paraphrased, goes something like this: “we want you to understand that no  one looks like cartoon characters and to be pretty and to be beautiful are not about what you look like. If you smile you are pretty, it doesn’t matter what you look like, do you understand?” She of course says yes, because she wants the doll. “Let’s go around the store and you tell me who is pretty.” Amazingly there are very few people smiling in a Disney store. Eventually we find someone who is smiling and we say together that that person is pretty.

So Albert asks her, “what does it mean to be pretty?” Curie points at her mouth and smiles, “That’s right, Albert says and then presses on, “Do you know what it means to be beautiful?” Curie shakes her head. “To be beautiful comes from your heart, when you are kind, when you are considerate, when you take care of others, you are beautiful. So tell me what does it mean to be beautiful?” Curie shrugs her shoulders, “I don’t know.” So Albert repeats it to her. When he asks again she says “it comes from the heart.” He pushes, what does that mean? After a few more repeats she says, “you have to be nice to people, and take care of them.” Again, she can say the words, but does she mean them? “Curie, what if we said we are not going to buy the doll today and we will see if you learn what it means to be pretty and beautiful.” “But I want it!” “What if you saw a little girl who was crying because her parents couldn’t afford a doll? Did you know if you had one and gave it to her, I would buy you another one? Because that would be beautiful.” Albert recounts for Curie when she gave away her sand shovel selflessly as a beautiful act.

“Okay, what does it mean to be pretty?” It is something like the tenth time, Curie answers correctly. “What does it mean to be beautiful?” Curie answers correctly. “Our friends are waiting for us for dinner, and we are late, what should we do?” Curie says:

“Let’s go find them, we can always come back some other time.”

From “but I want it,” to “we can always come back,” in thirty minutes. Albert tells her that is very considerate and very beautiful. She says “let’s go tell Mommy!” Erin picks the ball right up and tells her how beautiful that act was. As parents we are proud, but it is just one data point – one day. Albert reinforces as we walk through the mall going so far as to extol what Curie has done to a stranger. The man smiles and says he is proud of her. “See, he thinks you are beautiful. And did you see his smile? He was so pretty.” Coming out the mall, a person is holding the door open for us, Albert asks Curie, “what is the beautiful thing to do?” Curie holds the door for the people in back of us – ironically a gaggle of girls with American Girl dolls, and in the garage Curie says “let’s wait for Mama and Elia,” which Albert says loudly in a stage voice so the American Girls can hear “see, that is a being considerate, it’s a beautiful thing you are doing,” and Curie beams with pride and says “let’s tell Mama!” Albert says t0 her, “see your smile? That makes you so pretty.”

We are probably going to buy the doll soon, but haven’t yet. When she forgets to be nice or whines, we now say, that wasn’t very beautiful, and she quickly smiles and says “oh, sorry!” When she gives up her candy to share with Elia, we tell her she is being beautiful and slowly we reinforce the lesson. Who knows if it will stick, but when you tell her she has done something beautiful, she smiles this giant, very pretty smile.

Other things happened this month of course. After Curie stopped sucking her thumb, her teeth are starting to relax by themselves and straighten out. She loves to help cook and spends a lot of time preparing things in the kitchen. She wants gloves and tools to help rake and garden in the back yard. She raided all of her play-doh from her birthday and toys to try to make a giant play-doh egg like she sees in videos. Our family is regularly the subject of her drawings. On the way to her four-year check up she said that she wants to be a doctor and had Albert bring her “shot” and stethoscope to the appointment; upon seeing the doctor sling the stethoscope around her neck sideways, Curie mimicked her in the examination room and has begun doing the same at home. For Halloween she wants to be Elsa as a doctor. Queen Elsa, M.D.

She holds us to promises, has a memory like a steel trap. She loves, loves, loves Elia, going so far to be protective. On our New Orleans trip, Bernard joked that Elia could become part of their family and Curie said, “Elia is MY sister, she is part of OUR family, right Mama?” Curie loves her cousins as well, hugging Eleanor a lot and wanting to hold either twin’s hand during the trip. She is a lot younger than her cousins, so it is hard for her especially when her cousins are distracted to older things. One thing they all did together though, was beignet dancing. We recounted when we were last in New Orleans and had beignets which with the sugar caused Curie to dance around Cafe du Monde. So after each beignet this trip, they all danced around Cafe du Monde.

During the New Orleans trip she said a number of funny and fantastic things. She legitimately called security, “surgery” “I have to take my luggage to surgery.” When we were separated at security and reunited, she proclaimed “we’re a family again!” When things happen she likes to say “check!” As if checking things off on her list. And when our phone batteries had died after dinner and she couldn’t watch anything, she thought for a moment on how to entertain herself and said, “I know, I’ll use my brain!” Eliciting smiles from all of us; she doesn’t know she is being sweet and adorable. After dinner the twins were drawing and Albert gave Curie his pen to draw. She said to them, “my Dad gave me this pen, he always has what I need.”

It is not all cute and adorable though. We play crazy games in the car as we have mentioned, like “What Color is That Sound?” The new one is to make up new songs. Curie engaged us in a rigmarole song ten minutes long about a sad boy with no shoes in a swimming pool building french fry houses, eating them and then getting sick, that had us in stitches; her comedic sense of timing has only gotten better. Finally, we encourage her to have scientific observations and praise her when she notices something particular (Erin is particularly good at encouraging this). We end this post with a matter-of-fact observation that Curie told Albert out of the blue in the airport. “Daddy?” She says as they walk toward the restrooms. “Pee always comes before poo.” “What?” Albert asks. “Pee comes before poo.” she repeats. Albert gives it a thought – “you are right, that is a good observation.” Curie beams with pride and you can almost see her say “check!” In her head, at another truism checked off. And with that satisfied smile, it really does make her such a pretty little girl.

1. A smile makes you pretty regardless of what you look like.
2. Beauty comes from your heart and from what you do.
3. You can use your brain to entertain yourself.
4. Pee comes before poo.