TBT - Baby Brett

Tonight I took advantage of my Mom visiting and asked her to write up a blog post about my first few years.  I hope you find it as entertaining as I do.  Thank you, Mom!

Yep.  That's me.

We played for several days about what to name her.  Her dad stood firm with Darby, for Camp Darby, an Army ranger compound.  I fought hard with a list of really cool names like, Brooke and Paige but he just wasn't having it.  Megan, our oldest daughter settled the matter by loudly proclaiming that no one was calling her younger sister Darby.  So. Brett became Brett (thankfully).

She was a fiercely independent infant, wiggling her way out of three car seats and finally figuring out how to get out of the crib at 8 months old.  We called her Baby Houdini.  She demanded doing everything for  herself to include, climbing stairs, tying her shoes, and dressing herself, and staying up as late as everyone else.  This before she could even walk.  We were living on Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, the coldest and hottest place on earth.    When ice formed in the house near our sliding glass doors, she would slide on all fours across the white tile floors.  It was amazing.  When we moved to Germany, natives didn't believe that she belonged to us.  Because of her beauty, blue eyes and blonde hair, several times we encountered people who asked where we had gotten her (I suppose they thought we stole her from some nice Aryan couple).

Brett's independent streak made her just a bit difficult for many of our friends.  It wasn't unusual for us to be invited for dinner or a special occasion and then we would field the typical request, could  you find a baby sitter for Brett?  Her dad told me when she was 18 months old that she belonged to me.  He was finished with trying to parent her; he'd done everything he could think of.

When Brett was 2, we were invited to spend a week-end with my Aunt Irene and some of her grandchildren at her condo at Ocean City.  We had a great time until we had to get the children in the bathtub.  All the other children were fairly easy to get in the tub but Brett decided she wasn't interested.  I thought we would never get her bent in the middle so we could sit her in the tub.  What Brett didn't want to do, she really didn't want to do!

It wasn't until she went to school that we really had a clue as to how to handle her.  She loved school.  Almost overnight, we had a delightful, happy, charming child.  She just needed to be old enough to do the things she wanted to do and be in charge.  At one point in her K-1 classroom, when one of the teachers was absent, they turned a learning center over to Brett to control and all ran really smoothly.  Imagine, they quit requesting a substitute because our 5 year old did a better job.

When she was little and I was sitting out side her bedroom holding the door closed as she tried to open it from the inside, I knew that we would be lucky if both of us survived until she was 16.  We made it and had a really fun lunch, just the two of us, on her 16th birthday.  And because her dad had given her up, I got all the credit.