Our year has been a wonderful one! Each of us has grown individually and we've grown as a family. Eric amazes and inspires us. His joyfulness, playfulness, and eagerness to explore and learn seem limitless. He is working on the important childhood functions of establishing and testing limits. Though he learned "yes" first, he now uses "no" far more frequently—even when he doesn't mean it, so understanding what he wants can sometimes be a little tricky. (He does say "more" emphatically.) He can say quite a few words and recognizes and understands many more. His favorite things include, "Mommy", "Daddy", jumping on mommy and daddy, seeing new places and things, digging in dirt, mowing, brooming, vacuuming (definitely aberrant behavior), drawing and coloring, being read to, throwing and kicking balls, and eating ice, bean burritos, banana shakes, and "nunny" (breastfeeding).
Missy has officially extended her leave of absence until June of 1994. Being home with Eric and interacting with him in consistently healthy ways requires a great deal of energy, resourcefulness, and sensitivity. An abundance of those qualities helped Missy become a successful manager at IBM and they serve to make her a successful mom. This year, Missy was her soccer team's captain and she was able to play and/or practice throughout the year as an indoor soccer facility became available. She has been extending her craftpersonship in new areas including fabric painting and beadwork. Next year she intends to experiment with stained glass. Missy has been attending La Leche League International (LLL) meetings since Eric was born and recently two LLL leaders suggested she become a leader as well. LLL is a nonprofit organization that provides information and encouragement to breastfeeding mothers. Their philosophy on breastfeeding and parenting is very similar to Missy's and she has decided to apply to become an LLL leader. (In the U.S., on average, babies are breastfed for less than 6 months. Worldwide the average age of weaning is 4.2 years. Let's see if Missy can help get the U.S. average up closer to what nature intended and the rest of the world is doing.)
The project Curt has been working on at IBM for the past 18 months is winding down. The team he is on overcame great odds to accomplish something special. Curt is eager to see how, over the next one to three years, the market reacts to the product he helped create. Local management has already awarded the team more than two thousand dollars for the job it has done to date.
We had another birth in our household this year; the birth of a home business. We created our business, Alternate Healthier Choices, to help people make choices about their lives that are out of the mainstream, yet which better meet the physical, social, emotional, and intellectual needs of the individual. Our first project, completed in September, is an audiotape program entitled Healthy, Pain Free, Drug Free Childbirth. Early feedback indicates the product is a critical success but not yet a commercial one. We believe the commercial success will follow; the marketing possibilities seem limitless and we are just beginning to explore them. The working title of our second project is How to Have the Wedding You Want for $500 or Less. We've got ideas for over a dozen other projects including some pertaining to the areas of parenting, dietary habits, and creating healthy relationships. Working on these projects as part of a business is perfect for us since it is how we approach making choices that significantly impact our lives. Generally, we choose not to "go with the flow" and respond in culturally conditioned ways when we are making important choices. We will be researching for our business when we are researching for ourselves.
We did a lot of travelling this year. Curt had 38 holidays and vacation days to take and we spent nearly all of them out of town. We were in Florida the first week in March (Tampa and Orlando) seeing some of the Leslie family—Eric's great grandmom Leslie, great grandaunt Roberta, grandmom Joyce, Don, Wendy, Stroh, and Dalton, and Frantzs who were in town to do scorekeeping for the American Cup gymnastics meet (Dan, Cheri, Kimberly, Brian, Gary and Maggie). We also did the tourist things; Magic Kingdom, Spaceport, Universal Studios, SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, Clearwater beach, etc.
In April we visited friends and relatives in Ohio and Michigan. While in Ohio, the seven Frantz sons (Curt and his brothers), their three wives, and three children gathered to pose for a portrait for their parents Bill and Nancy. It would be a surprise 40th anniversary gift. Paul, Joanie, and Andy Giel hosted us for a day in Ohio and we learned their family would be expanding come the fall. We also saw the beautifully restored Ramage house (there had been a terrible fire last year) and talked with Missy's childhood friend Lisa Ramage and her mom Marge about Lisa's upcoming wedding.
In May we visited with Eric's Amie Carolyn Bloemker in Bethesda, Maryland (just outside Washington, DC). Eric and Carolyn get along fabulously! In July we made it to Allentown, Pennsylvania for the traditional 4th of July Frantz picnic. This year there were two picnics; the second, at Mom Monahan's house, was where we presented Bill and Nancy with the portraits of their sons, daughter-in-laws, and grandchildren including a 30" by 40" portrait with all thirteen of us in it. It was an emotional time. Allentown was extra special too because our 9 year old niece Rachel Leslie made the trip from Ohio to see us. We spent a day visiting the coal regions and the town of St. Clair where Nancy was born and raised.
We took time on this Pennsylvania trip to see some of the sights in Philadelphia—including Cathe Nold, Bill Bosler and their son Russell. While visiting Cathe, Bill, Russell and their cat, Eric made the mental jump that he could walk where he wanted without assistance and with no one there to catch him. He had been ready and able to do so for over a month but it was playing with the cat that helped him take those steps. On our way back home, we stopped to spend a day with Carolyn in DC.
In October, we made it back to Ohio and Michigan to see some of life's passages. We attended Lisa and Bob Battisti's wedding. At the wedding and reception, Missy had the chance to visit with some of her Chesterland neighbors from 20 years ago. Before leaving Ohio we met Lauren Elizabeth Giel, she was just under two weeks old.
In November we traveled to the historic triangle, Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown, Virginia. The best part of that vacation was that Carolyn drove down to spend some of it with us. We stopped in Richmond on our way back home for more sightseeing. In early December, we took a short trip to Greensboro and Winston–Salem, North Carolina to see some museums and historic sites. Later in the month, we went to Allentown, Pennsylvania for a week.
Travel for us is fun stuff. In addition to seeing so many of our friends and relatives, we visited over fifty parks, theme parks, amusement parks, museums, zoos, and historic sites this year!
We didn't go to California in 1993, we plan to vacation there next year, but Tami Sandercock and Steve Holsten came in from the west coast, fresh from their UCLA bar exams, and spent several days with us. In addition to meeting Eric and visiting us, they attended a wedding and planned for their own next fall. They'll be married in Duke Chapel. That's extra good news for us as it means we'll get to see them two or three times next year.
Our health has been excellent. Curt did have a hernia operation
in March, damn those hernia genes, but his recovery was very quick—operated
on as an outpatient, back at work the next week, on vacation the next month.
In his first 16 months, the only illnesses Eric has had were 3 or 4 colds.
He's never taken medication and, after his first week, he's only seen a
doctor once.
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