It's amazing how much you learn in your first few years of life, but how set you are in the core of yourself, really, in those few years. Despite more than 30 years of exposure to new things, and other cultural, societal, culinary, educational, and geopolitical pressures, that core doesn't really change too much.
To wit, please note: I'm about the age in the musings that nephew Nathan is currently. What will he be like in 20, 30, 40 years? Hopefully still the happy, optimistic, sunny kid, not too fazed by his older sisters' antics. Maybe he'll love horses, books, animals, or ... be involved with automobiles ... or some sort of police or fireman, or military man, protecting home, family, and country.
Anyway, these musings are by Grandmary about me ... lo, those many years ago.
L: February 13, 1974, Second Birthday ~ R: TBD
January 16, 1975 [AN: New typewriter and I'm not quite three here, 2 years, 11 months]
My, it’s has been over a year and four months since I wrote about our [Nettie] and she is nearly three years old now; quite a young lady. She has a little two month old brother, Jed, now and does not seem to be too jealous of him. His is another story for another book, so let me see if I can summarize the last year with [her.]
FEEDING
[Nettie] eats what we eat now and has nearly mastered a salad sized fork. I say she eats what we eat now—everything but potatoes, except fried ones. She will eat them raw, but that’s the only way. She doesn’t eat bananas either. [AN: I have apparently NEVER LIKED BANANAS!] In fact, she is not much of a fruit eater, but will eat any type of meat given her. [AN: Meat good.] In October of ’73 when we flew home to N.C. last, she began to eat eggs, and we try to have an egg at least once or twice a week. She likes food and usually east well at meals, but not in between. The past August, she stopped her snack in the afternoons and now usually eats three good meals a day. She doesn’t like milk in the mornings, preferring to have Tang whenever we will let her. On 18 Dec 1974 she weighed 28 pounds and was 36 inches tall. [AN: Tang! Chemical Tang!]
SLEEPING
[Nettie] now goes to bed awake, and I doubt that there are many nights that she goes directly to sleep without playing. Starting sometime soon after writing the last installment, we played a radio in her room at night until we got ready to go to bed and throughout her afternoon naps. This radio was to keep the noise down in the apartment next door. This July, after moving to [AN: REDACTED], Max got her bed done and she has not fallen out of it yet. She still sleeps 12 hours, or is in bed about 12 hours and takes naps at 1:00 until usually three. At her check up at 2 ½ the doctor found that she had a heart murmur and encouraged us to let her have all the rest that she would take. A bedtime ritual is reading two books which has been going on since the last writing. Now, she has quite a collection of books. [AN: And that’s when I started collecting books!]
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Bathtime means bubbles now. She loves to play in them. She still only gets the one bath a day now, and does a sloppy job washing herself.
[Nettie’s] vocabulary is great now and she puts sentences together well. For over a year now she was watched Sesame Street regularly and can now count to 10 and say the alphabet to P, and in generally recognize all the letters and numbers. She knows all the names of the colors but does get them confused often. For the past four months, she has been a Romper Room regular too and is really absorbing ideas and relationships. She started Junior Sunday School January 8, 1975. She is not quite as helpful as she once was, which may be is partly my fault, but then is so busy exploring her world and its limits. She can set the table and does put all the toys away. Since Jed was born, she has become a little more helpless. Before it got too cold, she had about mastered her tricycle, and I look forward to spring when she can play outside more and become more coordinated.
She is all potty trained, but we did not get down to serious business with that until after she was two. For several weeks, we tried the potty on the big toilet but that did not work at all. She just would not go. Finally, we borrowed a potty chair and after several more days of working with her for twenty or more minutes and spanking her, she would cry and relax her muscles enough to go. I would cry with her and give her big kisses. For several months all I did as take her to the potty at least every hour. To BM train her was easy after that. Then too she got milk poisoning from whole milk about that time and the diarrhea made it easier. By summer of ’74 she was dry at night too. It was simple after she realized what she was supposed to do! [AN: I *think* I’m thankful Mom recorded all this, I suppose?]
[Nettie] is still a generally happy child but right now she is really asserting herself and telling us no and not doing what she is asked. I hope I have the patience to endure this phase! [AN: HA! Just you wait woman.]
AN Notes: Grandmary and Grumpa Max lived in a series of apartments in Logan, Utah in their married life, and then one house. I think I lived in two apartments with them and then the house. I only remember living in the house, seen here on the right, in its incarnation in 2010. On the left, is the apartment probably referred to above - also taken in 2010. It was down the block from the house. This was probably the first instance in my life, of us literally moving next door, or down the block. That includes my most recent move, in 2006, from down the building two addresses down the street, to the most current studio from which I am blogging.
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