Fall began with Bethany and Randy celebrating their anniversary. Four years and the magic still sparkles. No big celebration. We just had a pizza picnic at Hawken House with the girls but it was nice.

Cate crying us a Happy Anniversary

Another Episode of the World According to Jane

Jane: Bunny and I are going to a meeting.
Bethany: Honey, why are you and Bunny going to a meeting?
Jane: We’re going to have doughnuts.

Actually Bunny is becoming more and more human.  He walks downstairs, he brushes his teeth and he uses the potty (something Jane still doesn’t always do).  The day after our anniversary, Jane became quite insistent that it was Bunny’s birthday and we needed to have a cake.  We suspect that it was all about her getting to have cake but we decided to indulge her --   After all, we got cake too.  We also found out that even though Bunny is always referred to as a “he,” Jane says he’s a girl. 

Bunny's 3rd Birthday

Maramec Springs Camping Trip

On the last weekend in September, we made our annual trek to Maramec Springs for our fall camping trip with our former neighbor Charlie. It was beautiful weather and a good time seemed to be had by all. Though with a significant increase in the number of people with toddlers, I can’t believe it was as much fun for those adults sans children (if nothing else it served as motivation for diligent birth control measures). We did the usual fish feeding, eating and drinking and general nothing (ahh, wonderful!).

The Curtis Family at Maramec Springs

Randy and Cate at Maramec Springs

While the non-breeders went on a day-long float trip, those of us with kids went to one of the wineries outside of St. James: Heinrichaus. It’s probably one of the most out of the way facilities, but it is by far the most charming being run by a 75 year old Rhinelander with a wonderful accent and love of wine. He appears the same as he did 20 years earlier when Randy first visited the winery while at Rolla. To accompany our wine we had a nice picnic lunch of good bread, cheese and crackers, and fruit (and Happy Meals for the under 5 set).

Anthony, Adeline, Randy, Bethany, Cate, Lisa and John at the Heinrichaus Winery

Like Tom Sawyer, Heinrich had Anthony, John and Randy helping him unload his trailer of freshly picked grapes and dump them into the grape press hopper. If the women would have let us, I believe we would have done the whole wagon.

Randy pressing grapes

Our trip was cut short, and we returned Saturday night after dinner so Randy to catch a flight the next morning to New Orleans for a month+ of levee repair work.

October

While Randy was in the Big Easy, Bethany and the girls were bachelorettes for the month of October, footloose and fancy free. Yeah right. It was clear to both of us that 33 days of single parenting toddlers was defiantly harder than the 13+ hours, seven days a week Randy was working. She kept in touch by sending him pictures of the girls throughout the month and talking on the phone near their bedtime.

Cate and Jane with their Halloween pumpkins

Cate and Jane in their matching red jammies

Halloween

For Halloween Cate was a rabbit, getting more use of the costume Jane used twice before. Her Trick-or-Treating joke was: “Boo!” Jane dressed up as a cat and her Trick-or-Treating joke was: “How do you make a Kleenex dance?... You put a little boogie in it.” (And that was all Bethany’s doing, believe it or not!)

Jane the Cat and Cate the Bunny (and Maddie the Dog)

Cate Update

Although you wouldn’t call her a Chatty Cathy, Cate’s verbal skills have been steadily improving the last 6 months. She clearly understands far more than she is willing to try and say and it’s fun to listen to her sing/talk to herself before going down for her nap or after awakening. With prompting from B, she was able to talk with Randy nearly every day on the phone while he was away, which seemed to please everyone. When she wants to say hello to the cats, instead of "meow," it comes out more like the name of the former genocidal leader of Communist China: “Mao” (it's very cute!). Her latest favorite game is hiding from us in closets and she has become quite familiar with all of them that aren’t locked. It’s amazing how much they change in a month at this age.

Cate at 19 months

November

Randy got back from Hurricane Katrina duty on 3 November; his time away oddly coinciding with Ramadan (no meaning there but interesting). It was quite the homecoming moment at the airport outside security gate with Bethany and the girls welcoming Randy home (Jane running and shrieking “Daddy!”, Cate and Bethany happily accepting a long kiss and hug).

Jane and Cate waiting for stories before nap time (note the groovy tie-dyed T-shirts from New Orleans)

Adeline, Bethany, Jane and Cate blowing bubbles on the balcony

Randy took a number of vacation days to enjoy the unseasonably warm temperatures and explosion of leaf color, which wasn’t yet past its prime. Randy and the girls went to the park every day for over a week, including a number of special ones.

Jane and Cate playing at Tilles Park

Although they’ve humored their dad when he wants to read dinosaur books to them or dress them in dinosaur shirts, taking them to see the fiberglass full-size dinosaur mock-ups at the Science Center brought no joy to them at all (to Randy's dismay they shrieked and cried like… well, like little girls). Taking them to see the moving ones inside should probably be postponed for a number of years unless we want sleepless nights full of anthropological nightmares.

Jane and Cate enjoying(?!?) the Triceratops at the Science Center

Nana, Cate and Jane at Margaret Park

The temperatures also allowed a window of opportunity to stain and varnish the trim for the great room, which was a project that has been moving along at a glacial speed. That’s glacial speed in the old sense of the word regarding an incredibly slow creep forward as opposed to a more current context in regard to global warming of receding not so slowly. Except for 3 doorways, all the staining occurred in the garage with the windows and doors open. Even so there were still enough fumes, to stink up the house really good. We had a bit of a gas leak scare, as when the fumes reached the water heater pilot light a new odor formed, smelling very much like the natural gas smell. Laclede Gas sent someone out to check it out and immediately identified the problem. He was still required to check every gas appliance and did find a real gas leak in the new (2 year old) power vent water heater closet, though it barely registered on his sniffer. Evidently, the water heater would “vent” the small accumulation of gas outside every time it kicked on and we never noticed. Pretty fortunate that we stained inside after all. So the trim is up and looks pretty good, though the color doesn’t exactly match the doors we stained 2 years ago. We’re thinking this spring we might add another coat of varnish with stain already in it to try and get it to match better. Given our issues with the fumes, we decided to wait until at least springtime when we can leave the windows open for a few days and stay somewhere else for a few nights.

Thanksgiving at Aunt Rhonda's

Thanksgiving had special meaning for us this year, and not because of the warm gatherings with family and friends on Thursday and Friday. Not taking anything away from those gatherings but it appears to be the turning point in potty training Jane, whose exceptionally sporadic interest in going somewhere else but her pull-ups or diapers was a continuing source of frustration for her parents. Since than, she’s been very consistent with holding it for No. 2. One down and No. 1 to go. The quality of these products is just too good.

Another Episode of the World According to Jane

While hearing her parents discuss money and spending at the dinner table, Jane responded that “budget” is a naughty word.
Why a duck? - Out of the blue, the week after Thanksgiving, decided to participate in her preschool’s weekly Show and Tell by bringing a stuffed duck that up until that day hadn’t shown any real interest. We can only surmise that she choose this for her first foray into public speaking instead of her uber-toy Bunny was that she didn’t want to risk other people actually touching her treasured rabbit.

Cate and Jane helping rake leaves in the side yard

Exploiting Our Children for Science

or Engineering Better Defecation Receptacles

All year we’ve gripped about the superior nature of the Proctor and Gamble products delaying the progress of Jane’s potty training. So when the opportunity to get free “experimental” pull-ups and be paid a nominal fee to log and Ziploc the resulting output, we took the “If you can’t beat’em, join’em” attitude and signed on. Fortunately for everyone, our participation in the study coincided with Jane’s consistent use of the potty for No. 2. We’re pleased to see the enthusiasm Jane had for the Buzz Light-year / Woody versions after only using the Disney Princess ones but doubt it will last.

Preparing for The Holidays

The fall season ended with our annual pilgrimage to Chaminade with the Sage Clan to purchase our Holiday tree and sending out our Holiday Greeting Cards. We have no problem calling them Christmas cards or a Christmas tree but any chance we can goose the conservative knuckleheads that are in a lather over this non-issue, we would feel remiss to pass up. Personally we suspect the issue was purposefully created by the neo-cons in order to distract the masses from the serious issues of the day, the same way they’ve done with gay marriage, flag burning, the Pledge of Allegiance, and other issues that purport to be clear signs of the degradation of American values. You can’t go too wrong by believing that the majority of the people in the US are unquestioning lemmings. (END OF POLITICAL SOAPBOX)

The Curtis family posing for our "Holiday Greeting Cards"

Bethany and Jane decorating our "holiday tree"

We also spent the last weekend of fall installing a new microwave and vent over the stove soon after our old counter-top microwave died. Since there was already a hood that vented outside that was installed during our addition 2 years ago, it was going to be a snap... Once again the Fates laughed at our plans of a simple home improvement project. Without going into the details, it took twice as long as our worst case scenario. But we are truly happy with the end result.

RBJC Curtis Family Front Page