During these months we have been in the middle of buying a house and moving, so we have not been doing a great job with this blog. July’s blog for Elia encompasses June 16th to July 15th, So we will recount the happenings for this time even though we are a month late.
Albert went to his company’s big conference at the end of June necessitating asking Erin’s parents to come help for the time he was away. With Erin’s parents, Elia was playing royal family with Curie and them, and her punishment for Pop-Pop was, “You must sleep in a bed with no pillows.” And while Albert was away Elia would tell him “Daddy, I very miss you,” and later, “Daddy, you said we had to promise to face call.” Albert notes that it is quite a thing to have your daughter miss you so much. On his return, she leapt into his arms from the foyer steps even before Curie could herself.
Elia is so adorable at the moment, even when she is being infuriating it is hard not to laugh at her antics. And she knows it too, she plays the clown making silly faces and nonsensical words. She continues her innate sense of rhythm during our dance parties and likes to shake her hips with her dancing. In dance, she plays the ballerina as often as a princess, and is a great sport when Curie asks her to play different parts.
When she talks about school she will be very serious in what she has learned and what she has discovered. “I had dirty rice with real dirt. It was really yummy.” She loves her teachers too, and we suspect has a crush on Mr. Wally. She climbs the rock wall facing out (we discovered because another student does it) , and strives to engage with her schoolmates going so far as to cut her own hair to look like her friend Anna, who has short hair.
We should read Curie’s blog of the same time period to see how having an older sister has changed Elia’s development. Erin and Elia did exercise together, let by Elia. Erin has to do whatever Elia does. The 4-yr old version of baby yoga. She dreamed strawberry pudding, woke up and said, “mommy, I do not like strawberry pudding.” She told us for the first time that she has scary dreams (7-16-18). She said, “When Mommy was little she was scared of the dark too and she was not a sleepy girl either, just like me.” She stopped saying “biana” now deliberately says “banana.” She even corrects herself when she reverts on occasion.
For the Fourth of July, Elia kept telling us that she was afraid of fireworks and the only way she would go is if we were very far away from them, because the sound was too loud. This is a direct result of the Hoaglands shooting fireworks for New Years Eve a few years back and yet she remembers it and is scared/scarred by it. We went to the Iwo Jima memorial to see them and have a staycation and she loved them, even though they were “a little loud.”
The best is when Erin and Curie are asleep and Elia makes her way down to say that she has to go potty, and says “I am not a “sleepy gul,” in order to sit next to Albert on the recliner and be held until the wee hours. And when it is time to go upstairs again, she asks if she can sleep in the guestroom with Albert to be with Albert. Even then she will toss and turn until she holds Albert’s arm to make sure he doesn’t leave and sleeps holding it tightly. In the middle of the night she will reach for him even without waking to reassure herself that he is there, and if he is not, she will wake and cry and make her way to the big bed and sleep with Mommy. More soon.