Shortly after Reese was born my mom quickly tired of calls with questions like "How old was I when I rolled over?", "When did I get my first teeth?", "How much did I weigh when I was ____?" Many of her answers were "I don't know, I'll check your baby book." Soon, however, she decided it was easier to relinquish custody of the baby book instead of fielding my random questions via phone**.
Since inheriting the records my mom kept of my youth, I've consulted the book many times. While Reese and I didn't accomplish all our developmental milestones along the same timeline, it's been comforting to see the growth charts that chronicle my slow weight gain as a baby and see notes about my screaming colicky months.
My baby book contains all the typical trappings: news paper clippings, "baby's firsts," month-by-month photos etc. But, it also contains short journal entries that my mom made during each month of my young life. The entries are handwritten on notebook paper and begin relating short anecdotes of my life around the one year mark.
When Reese started acting very "two-ish" this fall, Kevin and I started to wonder, "Is this normal?" And, let's be honest, there was a little bit of wondering, "Who does she get this from?"
I dug out my baby book to investigate.
The first group of journal entries I grabbed were from the months leading up to Kim's birth (15-21 mos. old). I sighed when I read my mom's bubbly entries about my developing verbal skills and her croons of "What a lovely child." Nice, but no help.
When I searched more for the entries about my life as a two year old, though, I discovered a 6+ month gap in my mom's writing--coinciding with the birth of Kim. Now that I have two kids of my own, I can hardly blame her for putting down the pen. It's hard to find time to go to shower, let a lone write.
When her journal entries resume around the 2 1/2 year mark, their tone is different. Her sentences are shorter, her stories about my behavior not so glowing. I breathed a slight sigh of relief and found solace in quite a few. Below are some direct quotes from the entries...see if you can see the parallels between them and what Kevin and I have been going through lately.
* "Elaine likes to dress herself. Gets frustrated but doesn't want any help. She yells 'I cant do it by myself!'"
* "Elaine has an elaborate bedtime routine. Gets rocked, drinks juice, brushes teeth, reads bedtime books, says prayers, needs a glass of water, needs a new book, says good night, gets up 5 minutes later, goes to bathroom, needs more kisses, needs to be rocked again, then maybe will go to sleep."
* "Elaine loves the swing and would swing all day long if we would push her." (There have been many times I've taken Reese to the park in hopes she'll run off some energy, but all she wants to do is swing.)
* "Elaine whines a great deal when she wants something. Should tape her and play it back to her as a punishment."
I KNOW I became an easy kid for my parents at some point--good in school, played independently, ate vegetables, was responsible--so, I'm hoping that Reese has such things in her future as well.
In this post I chose to leave out the amusing tales of my interactions with Kim as a toddler. (Think "Elaine bit Kim's finger today for no reason..." kind of tales.) After all, I know that relationship turned out ok despite any bodily harm we inflicted on each other before the age of 5.
And don't let this post fool you--Grandma Bailey has her own slew of stories about a toddler Kevin who could be found smashing Christmas ornaments and dumping Cheerios all over the kitchen floor. If only we knew how our genes would combine and create the perfect storm of toddler-hood...
**Editor's Note: My mom was not trying to hold my baby book captive, in fact she had been trying to give it to me for months (if not years) leading up to Reese's birth. Not one to be a pack-rat, though, I kept refusing it until she eventually brought it up to Austin and dropped it off during a visit soon after Reese's birth.
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