BABY STEPS

When our baby granddaughter Stevie began standing on her own in January 2024, her parents asked when her mommy first walked. I whipped out our children’s treasured baby books and calendars to find the answers. The dramatic entries of all our daughter Rina’s milestones and achievements were recorded on a day-to-day account in real-time.

I kept very detailed records on a calendar and still do today. Our daughter’s response, which she relayed to her husband, was, “We haven’t done that, but it’s okay; we have the pictures, and they’re dated.” Have cell phones taken over that job, too?

Reading the entries that I posted in the early days of raising our three children mesmerized me. I suppose that in hindsight, keeping those calendars pre-blog posting indicated my innate interest in writing that I didn’t know I had.

In one entry, I wrote: “When I asked Judd what he thinks of when he thinks of me, he said ‘love.’” Now, when I told our 3 1/2-year-old grandson, Dizzy, over Facetime that I love him, he instantly replied, “I love you too Grandma.” That was after a visit a couple of months earlier when Dizzy threw the papers by my computer so he could see the computer screen with his children’s program playing. When I told him he couldn’t throw Grandma’s papers, saying “That’s my work,” he said, “but they were in my way.” Can’t argue with that logic (Wink-LAUGH OUT LOUD).

Those warm and wonderful sentiments brought me back to the day our precious grandchildren moved to Ohio. As 2 1/2-year-old Solly was carried down the stairs to get into the car, I gulped, “You’re so special Solly” and she so quickly replied, “You’re so special too Grandma.”

You ask about our youngest child and the comments about him. You’ve heard there aren’t as many pictures of a third child. That’s not true here, but admittedly, we didn’t have the fancy baby calendars, just the regular kitchen calendars where I posted all of his firsts. One fun remembrance was being at a Yankee baseball game when he was an infant. The notes I recorded on July 26, 1994 show, “Everyone we passed at Yankee Stadium said how cute Moss [born June 1, 1994] is.”

Those calendar markings were very detailed. Towards the end of Moss’s one-year birthday month, I even wrote, “Moss pointed to an airplane in the sky.” At three years, he was creating stories from beginning to end, such as, “Once upon a time, there was a boy named Moss (that’s me) and I called [Uncle] Alvie and I went in my television room and watched TV. The end!” It’s no surprise that Moss is currently an editorial manager.

As the thought came to me to share my memory book (see my Tuesday blog post dated February 6, 2024, The Things That Stick in People’s Minds), I also felt compelled to share things from my stored calendars. After all, I saved them for a reason, and the thoughts and entries are worth sharing to be enjoyed by others. I have to convince my brother Al to share the sometimes silly, at times prophetic, and often wise comments by my children in their youth, which he faithfully jotted down and saved in his dresser drawer over the decades.

Years ago, I took all the matchbooks my husband and I saved from various establishments we stayed at or dined in and had them framed to help us enjoy those stowed memories. Similarly, why have these precious sentiments sitting unopened in a drawer, only to be tossed someday? I may as well reap the joy of those happiest of memories by sharing them.

That comment struck a chord with baby Stevie’s mommy and daddy since they texted similar words about Stevie making friends with everyone.

Look at the note I wrote to Rina on Dec 31 at the end of her first year of life calendar…maybe I got the idea to do that from a note my father-in-law wrote to his firstborn, my brother-in-law Jeffrey, copied on the cover page of this blog post.

I turned to the opening pages of the calendar and laughed at how I started my recordings so neatly by printing, and by the end of the year I made sloppy handwritten entries.

On Jan 18, 2024, Rina texted, “Stevie just took her first steps!!!” I replied, “Like mother, like daughter.” I can honestly say that they walked at the same age. That’s because the details are all written on my keepsake calendar.

Looking back, I would have entered all that dialogue about Stevie’s first steps onto my calendar. Heavens, pun intended, in today’s world, it is saved in the cloud.