The Curtis Clan - Spring 2006
Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice
Cate’s 2nd Birthday
|
Cate at 2
|
|
As noted in the Winter 2006 notes, over the last few months, it’s become clear that Cate’s favorite types of animal are turtles.
She happily points them out whenever she sees them, and pronounces “turtle” in the cutest manner.
So, we decided to make it the theme of her 2nd birthday party putting it on the invitations and her cake.
Bethany was even able to find a stuffed turtle at Ikea to give her. Evidently stuffed turtles are not all that rare as she got 3 others from family members along with a bunch of books, games and (perhaps most happily to her parents) savings bonds and college money.
As for the cake, Cate blew out both of her candles without help.
|
Bethany and Cate as she turns 2
|
|
That weekend also marked the transition from the crib to a big girl bed at home.
As with Jane, Cate didn’t give her crib another look. Bethany had the hardest time with the latest sign of independence in her youngest child.
The girls really enjoy having stories read to them from Cate’s bed.
|
Cate, Randy and Jane reading stories in Cate's big girl bed
|
|
Finking, Raisins, and Redemption
One afternoon in early April, Jane walks in to Bethany and says:
“Mama, Cate is sneaking raisins.” So Bethany walks into the kitchen and the pantry door is closed.
She opens it to find: Cate standing in the dark, her cheeks stuffed full like a chipmunk with raisins, one hand holding the carton of raisins and the other hand inside the carton grabbing more, and her eyes frozen like deer caught in the headlights.
It was all Bethany could do not to bust out laughing, while sending her to the required a time-out on the stairs.
To make the story even better, a couple minutes later Jane confessed, without provocation:
“Mama, I was sneaking raisins, too” and so she too deserved time-out.
|
Jane and Cate eating snacks they did NOT sneak at lunch time
|
|
Easter
|
Cate and Jane with their booty of candy-filled eggs after the hunt in Alton
|
|
On the weekend before Easter, Randy took the girls to Uncle Charlie’s in Alton to attend a neighborhood Easter egg hunt along the park that overlooks the Mississippi River.
There were only a few dozen kids and 400 eggs filled with candy, so it didn’t devolve into one of those frenzies of pushing, shoving and snatching you see on TV.
Both girls got completely stuffed with candy, cupcakes, cookies and lemonade (and loved doing it).
They also had the opportunity to meet the Easter Bunny (EB), although neither one was interested in the least in sitting on the rabbit’s lap.
Jane noted immediately with curiosity upon seeing the adult sized bunny, that EB was wearing tennis shoes.
She didn’t notice that EB’s tennis shoes bore an uncanny resemblance to Charlie’s friend JoAnn's shoes or that she had disappeared shortly before EB showed up only to return minutes after EB left, a la Clark Kent.
This earlier hunt filled the egg niche and we so skipped the egg dyeing ritual at home this year (no one eats the hard boiled eggs besides Randy anyway).
|
The Easter Bunny meets with Randy, Cate and Jane in Alton
|
|
Jane’s Latest Milestone
It appeared that at age 3-2/3, Jane finally made the move out of pull-ups.
In mid-April, she was keeping her pull-ups dry all day for several days in a row, so we finally broke out the “big girl panties” she had chosen over a year ago (Strawberry Shortcake ones for inexplicable reasons) when she was teasing us with success back then.
Like (most) everyone and every reference said, it just happened when she was ready for it, and it didn’t reflect any new and improved effort on the parts of her parents to coerce her to do so.
Claiming complete victory, she was quickly also ready to wear them throughout the night too. YAY!!!
The change is having a positive effect on Cate, who has taken to tinkling on the potty several times a day.
Since she wants to do everything her big sister does, we hope this means she won’t be far behind and we can end our tithing to Proctor and Gamble before the end of the year.
Father /Daughters Camping Trip
On the third weekend in April, Randy took both girls for a "second annual Father and Child spring camping trip" to Meramec Springs outside of St. James.
They were joined by friends Anthony and his girls Alex and Amanda; Todd and his eldest David; and Uncle Charlie and Bob (sans children).
On Friday after setting up on our favorite camp sites (#6 & 7), Randy took Cate on her first kayak float trip (a 2-mile float from the Highway 8 Bridge back to the campgrounds) with Uncle Charlie taking Jane.
It was a wonderful float, with the dogwoods still partially in bloom and turtles sunning themselves on logs until we got too close and they plopped in.
On Saturday, we made the obligatory pilgrimage to the Missouri Department of Conservation trout hatchery to feed the fish (twice) with the kids.
|
Cate and Jane splash in the Meramec ready to go on their kayak float
|
|
It began to rain intermittently Saturday afternoon and evening but continued fairly steadily throughout the night.
Fortunately it stopped for a couple of hours Sunday morning, allowing us to break camp in relative peace before it began pouring again.
Damp kids eating snacks and coloring under a dinning fly certainly beat drenched ones any day.
Dad had done an excellent job keeping the girls injury free up until 15 minutes before we were leaving when Cate took a chinner on the rocky gravel bar to join the big kids throwing rocks in the water and got a nickel sized scrape.
Everyone involved had a great time and seems inclined to make it an annual event.
|
Cate, Randy and Jane at the springs
|
|
More April stuff
At the end of April, Bethany organized a cocktail party at our house for the neighbors.
It was a very fun evening sans children with much animated conversation fueled by pitchers of highly-potent Cosmopolitans and beer.
The party only broke up when others had to retrieve their kids from the sitters, 1-2 hours later than they originally planned. Fortunately, Cate and Jane had a sleep-over at Gramy and Gral’s, so there was no need for us to be concerned that they might see their folks in less than favorable light.
P.S. - It will be awhile before Bethany has any cranberry-based drinks again!
|
Cocktail party-goers: Brit, Bethany, Sheila, Maria and Steven
|
|
May
As expected for two-year olds, Cate’s personality becomes clearer everyday. She’s very fond of the cats, hugging them whenever she can. Generally they tolerate it pretty well but she did get a (well-deserved) claw across the cheek from Bert that took a number of days to disappear.
|
Cate with Brazil
|
|
Actually the girls have been getting a lot more cuts, bruises and bumps this spring as they get more adventuresome and are becoming more independent.
Most days, their legs have a small bruise or cut. Generally, Randy is thinks it’s a good thing that they’re testing their limits (A man’s got to know his limitations – Harry Callahan) and aren’t acting too “girly”.
He’s almost looking forward to their receiving their first set of stitches as a badge of honor (he comes from a clan that has had dozens of stitches over the years).
However, Bethany remains unconvinced, coming from a tribe with 2 ˝ times the kids and cumulatively fewer stitches.
Still she’ll acknowledge that when it comes to emergency room visits, most “stitches” episodes are preferable to broken or sprained limbs, where the Sage tribe rules.
Hopefully the Missouri Department of Family Services doesn’t search on blogs looking for potential cases, since even talking about such things might seem suspicious.
|
Jane and Cate enjoying afternoon snacks on the balcony.
Note: Cate’s nice shiner on her chin after tripping on the sidewalk and Jane’s scratch on her left cheek.
|
|
The first weekend in May, we road-tripped to Columbia, MO to attend Anthony and Leasha’s Cinco De Mayo party, which was a family-friendly gathering.
Cate and Jane were quite smitten with their trampoline and jumped for an hour or so (note static electricity hair in the pictures).
The girls strongly suggested (i.e. whined insistently) that we should get one for our backyard too.
We cited the lack of flat space in the back yard and the local ordinance preventing them from being placed in the front yard (surely there is one...) as reasons why we couldn’t oblige their wishes, narrowly avoiding having to lie to them.
|
Alex Cate Jane and Amanda on trampoline
|
|
Keeping with long Curtis Family tradition, there aren’t any pictures of Bethany and her progeny on the actual day of Mother’s Day but we did get some the following Sunday when we celebrated with Aunt Rhonda and Nana at First Watch in Kirkwood.
|
Curtis Family celebrating Mother's Day
|
|
|
Cates gets her first set of pigtails
|
|
The highlight of our Memorial Day weekend (besides swimming at Gramy’s pool a few times for the girls) was attending a 1980’s themed party at one of the Tuxedo’s neighbors.
Bethany was in her element and decked the crew out in preppy gear (she just knew she'd once again have a use for her hot rollers, add-a-bead necklace, monogrammed papagallo purse, ray-ban aviators, bean shoes, and "silver city pink" lipstick!). We were easily the most 80’s looking family there!
We won a hackey sack, some Jelly Bellies and a rubiks cube during the dress and trivia contests and had a good time.
Bethany also got to see her cousin Erin Sage graduate from Fort Zumalt H.S. that weekend where she received more allocades than you can shake a small stick at.
She’ll be heading to Rolla this fall; 25 years after Randy went there. When considering what advice to give her, he couldn’t come up with anything that would still be relevant all these years later.
|
Curtis Family 1980s "Style"
|
|
June
On the home improvement front for Spring 2006, we planted a dozen or so bushes along the Cornelia sidewalk to replace the eunonymus bushes that had been slowly dying over the last few years from age.
So in a few years we should have a hedge of brilliant red Burning Bushes in the fall with a couple dashes of golden yellow to usher in spring with our Forsythia bushes.
We also varnished the stair case handrails, finished the trim in the foyer and added salvaged trim tiles around the “new” kitchen window.
We took the fact that no one noticed the tiling around the window until we pointed it out as a compliment, since it blended in with the original kitchen tiling really nicely.
This completes 2 more rooms of the original house addition project started 3 years ago. This leaves only the balcony tiling and some minor outdoor trim features still left to be done before taking on improvements that were outside the scope of the original project (i.e. finishing the basement).
We also patched the burst pipe leading to the outside faucet and added a couple of outdoor electrical outlets at the same time since the wall was open.
As with many home improvement projects, it seemed like adding the outlets shouldn’t have taken any real effort, although it involved some cursing and several trips to the hardware store before it was done.
For future reference, fishing wire through walls with insulation is a 2 beer (per person) project.
Jane finished up her first year of pre-school on 1 June and got to celebrate with Cate and her classmate/neighbor Adeline by getting McDonald’s French fries for lunch and dancing to a Wiggles CD we got from the library.
Jane and Cate are complete converts to Wiggle-dum and would very much like to attend their St. Louis concert in August.
Randy tried to explain the economics to Jane of what else she could enjoy instead of the $160+ it would cost us all to go to little avail.
Since we don’t have the Disney channel, they shouldn’t see any ads and hopefully, she’ll completely forget about.
The next evening, Bethany and I watched the documentary “Super Size Me” after the girls went to bed.
Besides the shock of the nearly a pound a day weight gain the guy had in the month of his only McDonald’s day, the elementary science project of seeing what happens to McD's french fries after 10 weeks in a jar was quite disturbing (the answer is absolutely nothing… they look exactly the same, while the “steak fries” from the diner for comparison molded within days). Anyway, the film made us question our very limited trips to McDonald’s (maybe once a month and almost exclusively on road trips).
|
Jane's last day of school
|
|
Randy in the Carrizo Dessert
In June, Randy had a 9-day trip to the Carrizo Impact Area in the desert. Since it took an hour and a half each way to gather there from the closet town with a hotel, El Centro, the 4 man team decided to camp there for most of the time to save the 3+ hour commute. Aahhh, the best laid plans …
|
Randy in the Fish Lake Mountains with Carrizo Wash in far distance
|
|
There were a number of difficult, disappointing and frustrating moments. Despite all the wagering back in the office about Carrizo Survivor, there were times when tempers simmered but they never really flared. It was a bit of an adventure in some stunning desert scenery. So here is Carrizo by the Numbers…or the Buzz from the "Bee Team".
|
Randy slide walking down Hill 816 in the Carrizo Impact Area
|
|
0 Days camping in field (of planned 6)
0.1 Estimated weight of dust ingested by the Wrangler team
1 Illegal immigrant encampment found
Snakes seen
2 Vehicles (Jeep Wrangler and Land Rover Discovery)
Flat tires blown at one time on a vehicle
Nights Wrangler remained in the field abandoned
3 Vehicles stuck/hung up that required shoveling and pushing (all by the same driver who will remain nameless since he bought the team beers but wasn’t me)
Hours of video Kocher shot
Bats seen flying out of a cave
4 Flat tires total
7 Days in the field
Tires changed (including rotating spares & failed fixes)
Bee Stings (2 Gilmore, 2 Curtis and 3 Kocher – “The Lord of the Bees”)
Trips to Wal-Mart to buy supplies
8 Nights in a hotel
11 5-inch rocket warheads discovered (including 5 our last day by Eagle Eye Gilmore)
15 MREs purchased per team member
17 Hours in field on Day 2
33 Hours Curtis and Kocher spent regaling each other with stories of their youth while bouncing in the Wrangler
40 Gallons of water purchased (used 30)
60 MREs brought to eat in the field (used ~24)
100s Bees forming nest in Jeep Wrangler
105 Average daily high temperature
~350 Cost of 3 new tires
1533 Highest elevation reached by Mountain Goat Fraser who enthusiastically climbed a number of hills the last few days
Father's Day
For Father’s Day, a few of the Sage Siblings gathered to repaint the EmbroidMe store that Alvan bought in Des Peres and is set to open in July (one of his two stores).
|
Bethany Van and Rosemary - intrepid trio ready for some latex paint splattering action
|
|
And who was watching the girls you ask?... Who needs a sitter when the empty display racks make an ideal pen for child and beast alike!
|
Maddie Jane and Cate caged
|
|
RBJC Curtis Family Front Page