A Real Baby
When I was a baby...I was acrobatic. NO kidding, I must have set the world record for the most near death experiences. Most of it was because my parents first child, my brother Caleb, was perfect. He was the baby all of the books were based on. He slept at the right time, ate at the right time, talked at the right time, walked at the right time. You can't hold anything against him. The only thing he did wrong was come out of the womb sunny side up,or face first. I would fault him for that, except I did the same thing. Even my grandparents told my parents that they'd get a 'real baby' next time.
They did. I was next in line, and I always kept my parents on their toes. First thing was, babies were supposed to sleep on their back. I cried and cried until they flipped me over onto my stomach, and then I was fast asleep. Now, my mom worked at a preschool, so she brought me along. (Quick aside, my Mom grew up in Africa, so she kind of does things differently than normal moms. Such as not taking maternity leave.) She thought it was time for my nap, so she settled me on a blanket in the next room and waited for me to fall asleep. It worked with Caleb...but I was a 'real baby'.
I was convinced it was not nap time, so when she left the room to go work, I cried and cried and cried....and cried. I wanted attention, not dreams and rest. When I realized she wasn't coming back I stopped crying and decided to explore. I kicked my legs over and over again, scooting across the room on my stomach. It was slow going, but my mom had heard I was silent, and assumed I was asleep. She kept working, and I kept scooting. I wasn't really crawling, as I was only 3 weeks old, but I was definitely moving.
My mom came to check on me when I started crying again. When she walked in, I wasn't on the blanket. There was a little trail of blood though, and her eyes followed it until she saw me, kicking and screaming, stuck under a drum set, the reason I was crying. When she picked me up from the trap I was in, she saw my toes were streaming blood, from when I was kicking them against the carpet, the answer to the blood trail. I think that was about the time she took her maternity leave...
And that wasn't the last time I surprised my mother with my acrobatics and stubbornness either. I flipped my car seats off counters, walked at ten months, and would refuse to eat sandwiches if they didn't land on the plate correctly. When I was asked to say something correctly, I would either say that's what I said, or I can't say that very well. I was a 'real baby' all right.
Sledding:
This was around Christmas time, when I was four. We had this really long and steep hill behind our house, and this year it happened to be covered with about three feet of snow. We invited another family to come over and go sledding.
Our sleds were in the form of big inner tubes. They glided really well on the snow and ice, but my mom was always worried that the inner tube fabric would tear on rocks and sticks. For this reason, we were told to stop short of the woods beneath the hill. But my mom didn't know how fats and icy it really was. Squealing and laughing we sped down the hill again and again, then trudged back top the top for the next ride. We barely missed a birdhouse, and we ended up hitting one of our guests, but we always managed to stop short of the woods.
Until later. By now we had made an icy track on the already icy hill and we were making breathtakingly fast runs. The ride in question was taken by my brother Caleb and I. It started out like all of the others, and we were chortling with glee. Then Caleb realized what we all should've a long time ago. We were going too fast, and the woods were coming up fast. We tried to stop, but we were only four and six. The tube was too big and going too fast for us to possibly succeed.
So we held on tight, certain that as soon as we entered the tree line the tube would blow up. Of course it didn't, and soon the small bushes and grass clumps pulled our tube to a stop. I don't think the tube was ruined, but I don't remember.
Australia:
Now I think it was the autumn after that sledding day that we moved to Australia to plant a church. We lived there for eighteen months in a white cement house with a pink kitchen and a big backyard. The House was cement so that we would keep cool in the hot Australian climate. In the back yard, I remember three different things happening.
One thing was, this was where my 'horses' lived. These, of course, were imaginary creatures that I had to substitute real horses. There were about twenty of them and I knew them all by name and color. Every day I went out to pet them, feed them and ride them. I led them to fresh pastures and settled their squabbles with a kind but firm voice. They all loved me and would come when I whistled. Even if I didn't have food in my hands.
The next one was a very short memory. I decided to grow an orange tree in my backyard. Very carefully, I saved the orange seeds, planted them and watered them every day. I was so sure the would sprout and grow up to give us fresh oranges everyday, but they never did. I was very determined, but it was the wrong climate for them to grow and nothing came of my work.
Lastly there was Chomper. Chomper was a very big rottweiler that lived in the house behind ours. Our yards were separated by a very tall fence, so Caleb and I would climb a tree growing next to the fence and watch him. We were very interested in the big dog next door, mostly because we had no dog of our own. We were fascinated, but our little brother, Drew was not. Every time we heard that tell tale bark, our little trio split up. Caleb and I went to climb the tree to watch, and Drew would run screaming inside and slam the screen door. He felt certain that the dog next door would jump over the five foot fence, and be stopped by the flimsy screen door. Chomper never even knew Drew was there.
Torn Between Friends:
I remember in first grade when I had two best friends. Two very jealous best friends. One's name was Audra, and the other was Joelle, who I called Jojo. We used to hang out all the time in first grade and play a game called pretty girls on the playground together. To this day I don't know what that game was about.
All I remember on this day was that they got into a fight. Somehow, they got mad at each other and it got so bad that they both wanted to tell the teacher. I remember seeing them, one after the other leave our playing spot on the carpet to tell the teacher...something. I think it was something like this 'Miss Bagely. Joelle/Audra is taking my best friend away from me' Meaning Audra/Joelle.Then they came back and gave silent treatment to each other while I tried to include them both in a conversation. It was very stressful from then until lunch.
When the lunch bell rang, Miss Bagely, the first grade teacher, called me over to talk with her. She said 'Both Joelle and Audra have come to talk to me today. I take it their having a fight and you're in the middle?' that's all I remember. It was a short but vivid memory, and I still wonder what the two girls said about me.
Mrs.Wiloughby's Class:
I am now in second grade, in a new wing of the school then I had been last year, and separated from my two best friends. Our class was a very fun one and this was a year full of many events. The first one I remember was the first day of school.
I couldn't find my class. I wandered down hall after hall, looking for the classroom, but I couldn't find it. I was a very prideful; second grader, so of course, I didn't ask for help. I eventually found it. That's all there is to that memory.Then there were the twins. Their names were Timothy and Wyatt and you could tell them apart by their ears. At least, I could. Wyatt's ears had a swirled pattern, whereas Tim's were more normal. Or the other way around. A long time later, I brought brownies to class on my birthday, and dropped the dish while it was still filled with brownies. It was a full year, but there was one highlight.
Now, at our school, they had one very strict rule that I remember. NO TOUCHING THE WALLS! It spread germs, apparently. So, one day, our class had been touching the walls in the hallway too much and we all had to sit on the side of the playground during recess. While we were there, there was a sudden crash . We didn't see anything, but the playground was blocking our view. The teacher watching us told us to stay put while she went to see what happened. there were shouts of excitement from children and whistles and yells from teachers as they tried to gather their classes together. Our teacher came back and hurriedly brought us back inside to the classroom, where we were informed that a tree had fallen from the neighboring forest. We spent the whole afternoon writing a story about it.
