walking down memory lane



Emily and Lauren walking in R.I. with their Grandpa (1980)

While it's been too hot to do much outside, I've been taking some pretty sweet walks down memory lane via some of my journal entries from 1980, when my two oldest, Emily and Lauren were almost 5 & 3.

"Emily put her arms around Lauren, hugging her and saying,'I love you, you little monkey'."

Late one night, after we all were asleep, Lauren started throwing up. When I went into the girls' room, I found Lauren pathetically begging, "Emily, clean me up."  Emily was absolutely repulsed, and cringed in the furthest corner of her bed.

"Emily is getting concerned with her looks, wanting to look pretty all the time. The other day, she walked very proudly up to me to display a new hairdo.  She had wet the front part of her hair and parted it down the middle. She told me it was her "sweaty" hairdo."

Lauren, on the other hand, had her own concept of personal adornment. "She loved her library book, "Where the Wild Things Are", with illustrations of huge hairy monsters.  During naptime, she called down to me, saying that her hands needed washing.  I was shocked to discover that she had drawn black "hairs"  all over her arms, so she could look like her favorite monster."