Anyway, I thought it would be fun to show you what Mom used to look like when she was just a girl, even younger than I am. So I dug through a bunch of old photos, and Mom helped me scan them, and now you will get to see them.
I didn't bother to look for any pictures of Mom as a tiny baby, so this is the youngest one I found. This photo does not have a date written on it, but Mom thinks maybe she was 18 months old. Or maybe she was two. Anyway, in this picture, Mom is holding her first doll, whose name was Baby Doll. Mom probably picked that name out herself. I thing it shows all the special creative talent that Mom would use later to become a writer. Eventually, Baby Doll got all worn out, and her head came off, and it turned out that her cloth body was filled with sawdust. Which is what they must have used to stuff dolls, back in the old days.
Here's Mom celebrating her 2nd birthday. Somewhere there is a photo of Mom's 1st birthday. It is probably in an old photo album that we were too lazy to get out. Anyway, Mom says that the 1st birthday picture looks almost like the 2nd birthday picture because the high chair is the same, and so is the table and the wallpaper.
In my opinion, the curtains in this picture don't match the wallpaper very well. Of course, nobody asked me, I'm just saying. It is likely that Mom's mom, my Grandma Helen, made those curtains because she was always sewing stuff. But Mom has admitted to me that Grandma Helen did not always have the best of taste.
Mom posed for this picture in her little red rocking chair, which she liked to sit in. I think Mom looks tired and cranky in this photo, which maybe she was because her Aunt Serena took the picture, and Aunt Serena was a sort of professional photographer. Or at least she thought she was, so she liked to have long photo sessions. Mom was two years old in this photo. She doesn't remember this doll or what the doll's name was or anything else about her. Mom doesn't even remember if this doll had sawdust inside her.
Okay, I probably shouldn't show you this photo of Mom, since it's kind of racy. If you are under 17 years of age, you should avoid looking at it and also the next photo!
Housebreaking is important for human babies, just like it is for puppies!
Mom's 3rd birthday party looked a lot like her 2nd party. Luckily, there were some different curtains, and I have to say that I like them much better than the first ones. The other people who were at the party were Mom's mom and dad, and two of Mom's grandparents. But they didn't get to be in the picture.
At a very young age, Mom started doing chores around the house. For one thing, she washed the dishes, even though she couldn't really reach the sink.
And she also hung the laundry out to dry, which was hard to do on a windy day. That ugly shed in the back of the picture used to be a chicken house, but by the time Mom came along, there were no chickens. There were just rabbits, who lived in hutches in the shed. The rabbits weren't pets. They were meant for eating. Mom ate rabbit meat sometimes, but she liked chicken better.
One time, when Mom was 3, she was helping her dad, my Grandpa Claude, paint bee hives. Mom was very busy painting, and then all of a sudden, she peed in her pants! And it just so happened that Grandpa Claude had his camera ready because he was going to take a picture of Mom painting. But instead, he took a picture of her peeing. And over on the right-hand side, you can see Tiger, the cat, who is very curious about the puddle on the floor.
Here's another picture of Mom that was taken by her Aunt Serena. This was at Christmastime when Mom was 3. Mom has hair that is usually pretty straight, but the reason it ended up looking curly in the photo was because Grandma Helen would set it in pincurls every Saturday night, and then Mom had to sleep on the pincurls, which didn't feel very nice, but it was better than sleeping on rollers, which she used to do when she was in junior high and high school.
In this picture, Mom is modeling a dress that her Aunt Winnie made for her. Aunt Winnie lived in California, and she also liked to sew, just like Grandma Helen did. Except that Aunt Winnie had much better taste than Grandma Helen did. Or at least that's what Mom told me. I never knew either of them personally, so I cannot make a judgment on this subject. Anyway, between the two of them, Mom always had lots of dresses and stuff to wear. Which meant that she almost never wore any store-bought clothes unless it was jeans or something like that.
Here's a picture of Mom with her 3 dolls, who were named Diane, Mary, and Daisy Mae. Daisy Mae was a "dancing doll" who was almost as tall as Mom. She had elastic loops on the bottoms of her feet, and you could put your feet through the loops, and then Daisy's feet would move along with yours while you were dancing.
When Mom was 7, Barbie Dolls were invented, but Mom never got one because she didn't much like to play with dolls. Mom was kind of a tomboy, and she preferred to play with horses and cowboys and Indians.
This last picture is of Mom with her "barn blocks," which Grandpa Claude made for her. The pieces all had notches at both ends, and when you put all the pieces together right, you could make a barn and some corrals. Probably these blocks were kind of like Lincoln Logs, but Mom never had Lincoln Logs since she already had the barn blocks.
There are lots more pictures I could show you of Mom, but that would make this blog entry way too long. So I'm just going to quit now. Bye!
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