Even though Elia’s birthday is in December, because we write hers from the 15th to the 15th, the events of her birthday will fall in the next blog post. Strangely, we will write about Thanksgiving now and her birthday and Christmas then. We could have made Elia’s posts on the month but that would have meant writing two at the same time, which would be quite onerous. In any case, Thanksgiving.
Our Thanksgiving, Christmas schedule is largely decided upon by Albert’s family and since they met up in October for Columbus day, we found ourselves not having any Thanksgiving plans. We did need to take the kids out to another country this year, but since our house had not yet rented and we were paying both rent and mortgage, we felt hesitant to do anything more than to drive to Canada again. Erin’s parents hadn’t seen the kids in a while since her father had been on the road quite a bit for business trips, but wanted to see them before the holidays. They planned on a day and a half trip the weekend before Thanksgiving, which didn’t quite make sense, so after a quick conversation, we decided to have Erin’s parents for Thanksgiving, and we’d have a trip to Canada at Christmas.
In anticipation for the holidays, Albert bought both girls a Thanksgiving dress and a Christmas dress to wear. Elia has been wearing dresses every day and after trying on the Christmas dress to see if it would fit, didn’t want to take it off. We had to convince her that she didn’t want to get it dirty since we needed it for the holiday card picture. She wasn’t really convinced and cried for some time. Lately, Elia has been more emotional which may be as much associated with having fewer naps as with growing up in general.
Both kids are very aware of claiming territory, deciding that one likes udon, so the other likes ramen, that one wants to be the queen so the other is the princess, that one wants to be the “good guy” and the the other wants to be the “bad guy.” Now both kids liked the evil queen more than the princess – perhaps because villains tend to be more interesting, but Elia in particular has gravitated toward the “bad guys.” This is likely because Curie has been influenced at school to be the good one lately. Elia liked Jackson Storm, loves the evil queen dress, and picked Blackfire because Curie picked Starfire. What we don’t want is that she decides she should actually be bad, but we will have to work on that and see.
She loves potty humor too. In addition to the Greatest Showman joke, she also loves the scene in Teen Titans Go to the Movies where the giant balloon man gets a quill in his butt and air escapes like a fart. “It’s not a fart, it is only air, escaping my butt.” She loves that. She also loves the Pooh game on Christopher Robin. Now she and Albert have been playing a variation of it for some time, pointing out things in the road with no points – interestingly enough it started out getting points but she asked that we did not score and that we would just point things out. Curie has a version of the game where points are awarded and someone wins. Being a Chen is pretty competitive, and the fact that Elia asked for no points said a lot about perhaps not always being competitive. Things to learn from Elia.
As we said in out last post, Elia still loves to be with Daddy and really wants him to give her the attention he has, but with his working with Curie on homework, she has been spending more time with Erin, reading, playing, helping around the house, folding clothes into tiny Elia decision folds. When it comes time to see who sits with whom at a restaurant, the girls will fight over who sits with Daddy. Elia, remembering Chicago and other situations where we needed the buddy system, will tell us that Daddy is her buddy or her date. In fact, she will whisper it to Albert that he is her buddy. There are few thing more adorable than a four year old, soon to be five, who comes up to you, takes your hand and gives the hand squeeze for “I love you” without any prompting.
Elia can count to twenty, knows her letters, can write her name and more. She is at the same age as Curie when Curie started kindergarten, and perhaps because she is the second one and that we now know what she should know, and perhaps because she is getting a better experience at this Bright Horizons, she knows more than Curie did at the same age. At school she has Lucius as her BFF and the other kids are only BFs – which cracks us up. Lucius is her BFF as long as he does not play vampire which is scary, but it is okay if he is a monster.
Elia requested that her birthday party be at Busy Bees again, but when she found out that Curie’s friends wouldn’t be able to go, and that Curie was sad that she had no friends at the party, Elia first said that she would be her friend, then later told Erin that she wanted her birthday to be at Jumping Joeys, so that Curie’s friends could come too. We talk a lot about Curie being considerate, but Elia is amazing in her own right. We made it a point to tell Curie that Elia had decided on Jumping Joeys over Busy Bees specifically for her (and that she had just gone to a party at Jumping Joeys and had a great time).
After Thanksgiving, we took pictures for our Holiday cards, which meant the kids got to wear their dresses and the dresses became part of their rotation. Ever since the Tamanahas gave us dresses last year, we have acquired many many Costco dresses for them. They look like they are going to occasions every day instead of just dressing in playable clothes for school. Elia, for a time did not wear her party dresses to school because she couldn’t wipe her butt as well, but that is changing again. The kids loved decorating the tree, and for the first time since we got them from the Hoaglands we put out our inflatable Olaf and Snowman (named “Frosty”). We have them on Wemo plugs so they love to turn them on and off on the phone.
Packages started arriving for presents and Elia is sad to the point of crying or whining that she can’t open them right away. Learning to wait is good for her but it is hard to understand as a four year old soon to be five. We forget that she is still so little since she can hold her own with Curie, but we forget that Curie is also still so little, even though she is the older sister and seven. With all that his happening at work and with the house, the deck is finally done, we forget to be family at times and order pizza, and try to get through the day. It is when you take a moment and just hold your kids that you remember the important things, that you need to take time to draw and read, and see the clouds and sky, and point out plants and cracks, and just enjoy being a child with them. Remembering that they are children and need to be children reminds us of how important that was to us and is to us each and every day.