30 Years Ago – December 1990

In December 1990, we were challenged to clear out my mother-in-law’s apartment after her funeral in late November and celebrate the holidays with our 15 month old daughter….but we made it.

We had several sessions to box up the apartment (usually while my daughter was at day care) – some to donate and some back to our house. Movers brought the things that came back to our house. My husband handled her last bills, and I did most of the unpacking at our house. The living room of our house was full of boxes for the early part of the month.

It was a lot to do overlaid on putting up holiday decorations and picking out gifts. Remembering it now – I’m sure the flurry of activity associated with the holidays helped lift our mood considerably. One memorable event happened at a shopping center where they had a roving Santa; our daughter’s response when he offered her a candy cane (even though she was standing between me and my husband) was to lay down on the sidewalk and cry….evidently traumatized by the Santa…or maybe it was the candy cane. I scooped her up and she calmed down almost immediately. We didn’t try to do anything else with a Santa that year.

We took her to the Christmas Party for children at IBM (where I worked); we attempted getting her face painted…but she only wanted to sit still for one small design; she enjoyed a large oatmeal raisin cookie…and she got her IBM bear (white bear with an IBM t-shirt) which was a good size bear for her to carry around.

There were lots of things on Christmas that she enjoyed too – a phone (she was getting adept at pushing buttons), a panda bear that was about the same size as her (that was later named Mr. Zebra), and a Little Tikes grocery cart. I noticed in one of the old pictures that she must have used a small red basket I’d bought as part of our Christmas decorations years before she was born as a toy as well…just her size.

Even this early in her life, she’s already accumulated a lot of stuffed animals. We arranged them in her crib, and she liked to be there with them. Note that she was already adept at grabbing the big bears by the ear. She liked having them with her more than blankets!