I'm still determined to catch up this blog year and not miss documenting most of Agnes's second year, and to that end, I'm squishing all of February into one post. It's not great, but it's better than nothing!
Agnes loves playing "surprise" or "I see you!", especially if it involves taking someone else's shirt and putting her head in and out of it. I have to watch the hamper or she'll empty the whole thing and manage to get several dirty shirts over her head at once.
She's also very adorable in her little Gemini Rogue volleyball shirt that coordinates with Catherine's team's uniforms, since she's always with me at games and tournaments.
Our friends Alex and Lecia from Cape Cod came and stayed with us for a few days. It was a super fun visit and fantastic to see them - it's been way too long since our last trip to the cape! The weather was passable for February so we put on some coats and spent a morning at the zoo. Edie is still sporting her little bangs haircut she initiated with her own scissors.
Agnes loved seeing all the animals and was fascinated by the seal tunnel, as are we all.
I have half a dozen pictures of Edie and Michael, and they look like this in almost every one. I promise they had a fun time! Apparently animals just confuse them a bit.
We had to get a picture of all the kids with Alex and Lecia to send to Alex's mom. The last time we had pancakes in their old restaurant, Catherine was only four!
Someday I'd really love to convert one of our fireplaces into something that has actual flames, either wood or gas, but for now the kids love the little electric inserts that were left in the fireplace holes. It's their favorite place to sit, read, play card games, and eat (in the case of the dining room fireplace).
Michael Jr has been playing piano a bit more again - he can memorize a song by ear in just a couple tries.
I was trying to cook dinner and the kids were all in a terribly goofy mood, and for some reason Catherine decided she was going to wrap Edie. I don't even wrap Edie anymore - she's too big!
And since that wasn't goofy enough, she also wrapped Michael Jr. It most definitely didn't last longer than this picture.
A friend of ours has pet bunnies, and the bunnies had babies, so we went over to enjoy baby bunnies. Edie decided she was a bunny whisperer and was delighted when all the bunnies collect in her lap and fell asleep.
I'm pretty sure our friend had designs on sending a couple bunnies home with us, but I resisted, even after seeing this face!
I started running a bit again and made Catherine run with me to keep me going. She's a bad influence. After a run of only a couple miles, she had to stop for ice cream on the way home. Only a 13yo can run and then eat ice cream on the way home. (Side note: the other kids found this picture on my phone weeks later and Catherine and I were both in trouble for getting Catherine ice cream without them. Oops!)
I am so far behind on the blog that I can now put all of Catherine's first volleyball season into one post.
Around the middle of Catherine's first season in CYC volleyball, last September, her coach asked me if she would be interested in trying out for a winter club team. Even though she'd only been playing for a couple months, being a 5'9" seventh grader gave Catherine an automatic volleyball head start, plus she really liked it and practiced constantly and improved quite a lot in a short amount of time. Three of her CYC teammates were planning to try out for a specific club team with a coach known to their parents, and Catherine **really** wanted to keep playing, so we decided she could try out for that team.
I'll be honest: I had never dealt with club sports before and had absolutely no idea what we were getting into. I looked at the proposed season schedule before the tryouts and was a little concerned: two late evening practices each week, one season of Friday night games, and about one weekend tournament a month (a lot of them on Sundays, and it turns out more tournaments were added later), from November through the end of April. If Dema and Grampy T didn't live a few steps away, making it easy for Dema to watch the other kids while I took Catherine to late practices and Michael was working, it would have been impossible from the start. With Dema's help, it went from impossible to difficult, but manageable.
Catherine had never tried out for anything before, so she was a little nervous but really jumped in and did her best and was offered a spot on the team. So we signed the paperwork and practices started not long after that. Catherine loved it. She practiced every day at home, she consistently improved, she figured out her overhand serve, and she learned a lot about rotations and positions and game strategy. She also had to take some online classes covering league rules because the girls all have to referee some games at the tournaments, and the rules for rotations and substitutions are surprisingly complicated.
Her coach easily pegged her as a Middle Hitter, so she only plays at the net and started learning how to approach and hit as well as the timing necessary for a good block. Everything was new, but she was so excited about practicing all the time that she improved weekly, and it was really fun to watch from the sidelines.
Finding her overhand serve was a struggle for a bit but she figured it out over a month or so of daily practice (many many thanks to Dema, who fixed the outdoor sconce light on the garage wall that was collateral damage to serving practice).
After a few games Catherine decided stuffing the ball back on the other team's side of the net was super fun.
But she can also hustle and get under a ball when she needs to and has a great set when the setter calls for help.
And she's learning to jump really high. Once she gets more practice in anticipating the timing and position of a block, she's going to be hard to beat at the net (although we've said only a little jokingly that for the moment, even if she just stands at the net looking tall it helps her team just by intimidating the opposing team).
I remember this picture from a tournament in January. Her team was down by quite a few points and the other team was at game point and Catherine was up to serve, so if any serve failed it was automatically the winning point for the other team. She served seven or eight in a row that were either not returned or volleyed but her team got the point, and ultimately brought them from behind to win. This picture was right after the other team failed to return the final serve and the looks on her teammates faces are so fun. After so many weeks of frustratingly difficult work to get her overhand serve even over the net, being able to accomplish a string of consistently good serves under pressure made it a great game for her. Next challenge is to learn a jump serve!
Here is a short video with three clips, the first a block, then a set, and last a hit. Look for number 6 on the far side of the net in the blue jerseys.
Since I'm writing this in May, I could be reporting all the way through the end of the season anyway, but sadly the season was cut short by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. They were scheduled to continue playing through the end of April, but the last tournament they played was February 29 (where these team jackets were delivered and they were all so excited that we moms had to get a picture).
Soon after that, the league games were put on hold, then practices cancelled, then tournaments cancelled or postponed indefinitely, and it became clear that volleyball (and everything else) was done for the season. City and statewide stay-at-home orders came out and, originally thought to only last a few weeks, will actually stand through the middle of May, and it looks like gatherings will still be restricted after that. We are hoping for a normal season come Fall, but no one really knows. Catherine was pretty well crushed by the abrupt end to the season but I know she will have no trouble picking up right where she left off when she gets back to team practices. One of the great privileges of parenting older kids is watching them find something they enjoy and work entirely of their own motivation to improve at it, and this was definitely the case with Catherine and volleyball this year. This might be something she continues to pursue or it might not, but either way we couldn't be more proud of her for the work she put in this first year!
Edie started her first ballet class last Fall and has LOVED it since the first day. Her big sisters tried ballet briefly but didn't show any particular interest in it, but not Edie. She lives in her ballet leotards. She dances for anyone who will watch for a few seconds, and it makes her so happy. She loves dancing!
These pictures are from her last "open curtain" class in February, where they still have just a regular class but the curtain to the studio is left open so we can watch and distract the girls by smiling and taking a lot of pictures. Edie has a great ability to focus in and listen when she wants to.
Do you see her ballet hands? She had to work very hard to keep her graceful ballet hands while leaping over the tap shoes (aka a crocodile).
One of her favorite parts of class is when her teacher gives them all a ribbon to twirl and turns on some music for free dancing - as long as they are dancing and trying not to run into each other, they can do whatever they can think of, and she never has a shortage of ideas.
Edie was ballet-running and leaping toward me so quickly that I missed the focus on this picture.
And they even got extra time with the ribbons in this class because they started to prepare for their end-of-semester recital.
Unfortunately just a couple weeks after this everything got shut down for the coronavirus and it looks like they won't be allowed to go back to dance for a while longer, and certainly not in time for a Spring recital. For a while Edie stayed optimistic, feeling sure she would be able to go back to class soon and they would get ready for their recital, even if they didn't have time to get everything just perfect. This is the girl who was so excited about recitals that when she first started ballet class, she thought she got to dance in a recital with people watching her EVERY WEEK, just like the other kids' sports, where they practice and then have a game the parents and grandparents go watch almost every weekend. She was a little disappointed when she learned this is not the case with dance, but she was crushed when she finally started to accept that her first recital that she has been waiting so long for is cancelled. If you're ever talking with her and she suddenly grows cloudy and stomps away muttering about "stupid coronavirus," chances are she started thinking about her recital again.
We have missed this sweet little class and Edie's lovely teacher - hopefully we get to return in the fall!
Guess who's THIRTEEN? The first teenager! In case you haven't been able to spend enough time with her recently to know, Catherine dominates as a teenager.
I really wanted to do something fun for Catherine's 13th birthday. Maybe a little trip? A show or outing just the two of us? Big party? And she wasn't really interested in any of it. All she wanted was to go to the beach, and it being January and us living in St. Louis, the beach doesn't come close to qualifying as a "little" trip. However I talked to Aunt Kristin about driving the kids down to Florida for a visit with them sometime in May, as soon as everyone was done with school but before the summer camp schedule kicked in. So I told Catherine I couldn't get her to a beach in January, but if she would be willing to take a raincheck on the beach trip until May, then we'd all go. So we had a small party with family and ice cream cake for her real birthday, and looked forward to cousin Christopher giving us surfing lessons come May.
Before the party: all kids have to sit ON the table instead of in chairs to play games at the table, right?
Oreo ice cream cake courtesy of Dema!
Agnes thought all of the present were for her to open, of course, and Catherine is the kind of big sister who lets her believe it.
After presents, Gigi brought out one of her famous magic tricks. She gave the kids a few hints on how to accomplish this chain-and-ring trick, and Edie was the first one to figure it out!
The haircut she gave herself must have made her super smart.
Hi Mamo!
I know we're only a few months into this teenager phase, but for the moment I'm leaning to the side of THREEnagers being much more difficult to live with than actual teenagers. Here's a little "moment in time" picture of what Catherine is doing at 13:
Height: 5' 10" (taller than me if I'm slouching holding a toddler, but not quite taller than me if I'm standing up straight)
Shoes: Definitely bigger than mine now, but I got some nice hand-me-downs from her, so that's good.
Hobbies: Volleyball, watercolor painting (she's getting quite good!), growing houseplants, piano (sporadically), baking, sneaking oversized t-shirts and hoodies out of Daddy's closet, and a fun little pasttime we like to call "pushing Mary's buttons," unless they're both in the mood to be friends, which is more often than the mutual button pushing.
If teenagers have a reputation for being disrespectful and selfish and distant, well, we're definitely not there. Catherine is generous and fun and involved, better at entertaining Agnes and getting her down for naps than I am, and loved by her siblings and friends. Her one teenage habit is probably taking lots of selfies, but I'm actually fine with that.
Happy Birthday, Catherine! I'm sorry we haven't been to the beach yet, but we love you!
