Being behind all the time in blogging is evidence of how little brain space there is to do very much. Laundry is always behind, the house is not cleaned, and we work day-to-day to get the kids fed, homework done and the kids to sleep. We parent by screen time a lot just to keep the kids busy, but recently we have noticed, that if we ask the kids not to watch, after an initial whining, they will play and prefer to play. We have a lot of toys, and really could do with a purge of older and lesser toys, but Elia is of the age right now that it would break her heart to give them away.
At the same time, the girls love to get new things, rather they like the idea of new things. We have experimented with packaging and reopening toys for them, which Curie loved. And Elia loves the idea of unpacking the toys in the garage to play with again. The problem is that we have bins of random toys that we really need to sort and decide if they are legitimately toys or simply the product of Kinder eggs, blind boxes, or Happy Meals. Albert has created a sorting system with dolls in one box, and Playmobil in another and so one, but this causes Erin stress because she does not pattern recognize in the same way and is prone to putting Lego in the same box as a Playmobil box.
It is important to remember that Elia’s blog is mid-February to mid-March for her March blog because when you write late, it is usually with a little more time in hindsight than when you are writing on time. Kindergarten orientation, the trip to the gardens, and trip to the lake, all of these things have happened but they belong in the April blog. Instead we hearken back to February 15th, when it was still cold outside, and Elia didn’t want to wear a coat claiming that she was not too cold, but would still wear a t-shirt and pants under her dress. Elia would rather not wear anything under her dress because her friend Sloane, who also wears fancy dresses does not. Elia and Sloane are in a bit of an arms race on dresses which has spilled over to the other little girls in the class. We don’t know how normal this is, but it is really our fault. Curie, we are told, always wears fancy dresses at school – but we want them to wear what they want and to assert their identity; so if a party dress is normal, then it is no less normal than insisting on a particular t-shirt or pants.
We went to the Mosaic district where we found out that Elia does not like Jinya Ramen, but has the most amazing puppy dog face which she adds her hands like paws on her chin. She will make the navel orange smile when given orange slices, and loves to run with Curie on the turf field. That same night Susie and Israel had us watch their kids and Elia began to be more watchful over Olivia rather than jealous of any attention to her.
Something important happened as well with a television show. Albert has been watching Top Gear and The Grand Tour for some time now and in watching spin-offs of the series watched James May’s Toy Stories. While getting ready for bed, we watched the Lego house episode with the kids followed by the Plasticine episode. Elia really loves those episodes and will ask to watch them again and again. “We haven’t watched it in a long time.” The thing though, is that the premise of the show is that old toys are as fun or more fun than computer games, and this has borne to me true for our kids. The Switch is not played often, and though Legos does not get the same kind of attention that it had when Albert played with them – because everything has directions now – Plasticine was a hit.
Curie made flowers, Elia made spectacular cookies of abstract shapes and designs. Yes, a lot is a function of their age, but Elia produced stuff that was imaginative and amazing, and if you didn’t know that a five year old made it, you might put it in a Moma.
We went for a beautiful walk in Accotink, followed by a trip to Disney on Ice again. It was an older show and Curie was bored with the Toy Story part which took a large part of the first half, but the same Toy Story made Elia a little interested in it. Both girls like the Cars section and they actually like Cars 2 better than the first or third one, which is interesting since that is the one with spies and action more than character driven stories, Instead of Disney dresses, Curie wore her purple Shopkins dress stating it was the Rapunzel dress, and Elia wore her gold dress from Julie’s wedding stating it was Belle’s dress. It is nice to see that their imaginations are still working in a day and age when you can buy almost anything in merchandise for a movie. They DO have ready made dresses for Disney, they just chose to wear ones that they imagined instead.
At school, Elia made BFG ears with Miss Amanda as the last lesson from her. Elia misses her terribly along with Mr. Wally. She does like the newer teachers, but Elia does remember her old teachers.
Elia did get her new car seat, it is just like Curie’s but it is purple. Curie interestingly enough didn’t want the new one and wanted to keep her old one, though there was a chance to put the two new ones in one car and the two old ones in the other. Instead each has their own in each car. Elia can now open the window, see behind her, and reach down. She is so proud to grow up and to be big enough for the new seat.
What else? We got Marvel pajamas, played with the Thomas tracks, we bought a wagon and brought it to the mall, Albert took Elia on a date, and we went to Nora’s birthday. We also went with the girls to see Captain Marvel, our first live action superhero movie in the theaters with the girls. We were hesitant because they are scared about fighting and violence and we did worry about not screening it first, but it is a powerful movie about a strong woman character and like Wonder Woman, we didn’t want them to miss that. They loved it. Curie was more scared in the theater than Elia, but they loved it anyway. Albert kept calling it Captain Marbles, to which Elia always answers, “no daddy just one marble.” We are not sure she gets the joke, and it is so cute that we don’t really want to disabuse her of the notion.
Which brings us to the end of the month: Elia keeps growing and being so cute in her learning about the world. Both girls are still discovering, and we forget that they are still so little. At each age it is truly amazing still, and we need to relish our time now. We still pick them up when they ask, we spoil them a little too much, we resist the weekend extracurricular in favor of family time, and unstructured fun. We leave you with some wisdom from Elia which encapsulates this age and the wonder of being a parent. This is from Erin’s Facebook: “Elia just told me that Pluto used to be a planet, but now he is just a dog.” Crazy fantastic adorable.