10-20-30

Okay, a dear friend, NannyOgg, passed this challenge on to me. I was just really glad that it wasn't some kind of chain letter!
Here it is.

Ummm, why is one of the photos missing? It used to be here , and I didn't remove it.

Now

Anyone want to vote for the haircut they like better? The two above photos were taken only a few days apart.





Then:
Ten years ago I was happily working on my second year employed as a lactation consultant in a small community hospital with a lot more confidence than the first year. I'd been using e-mail for about three years, signing up to join Lactnet, a list for professionals involved with lactation. My mother with Alzheimer's Disease had been tricked into coming to live with us (good friends stopped plowing her driveway in Southern Va, where they had more snow that year than here up North) and having her live here was an adventure in and of itself. Don't ever try to use logic to convince someone of anything if they have dementia. Join their logic instead. To illustrate; One day I was in her room and saw that she'd propped up a postcard of two American Indian boys. It showed them from head down to just above the knees. In front of the postcard there was an open snack-sized applesauce with a spoon in it. I remarked ,"Oh, Mom, were you going to have a snack?" "Oh, it's not for me. I put it there for those poor boys. They don't have any legs and they can't leave." See? Logical, right?!

I found it healing as I could actually hug her and tell her I loved her, something that had rarely happened before in my lifetime. I'd suspended the LLL meetings as my mom didn't do well with the moms and babes in the house.

My older son was a sophomore in college and
had made the NCAA Div I soccer team. He's #21. I drove to all the home games held, luckily, on my days off. At home I was still driving to girls' high school and boys' elementary school soccer matches as well. My daughter was about to be graduated from high school with honors and a scholarship - which dh MISSED as he'd taken off for France and the 1998 FIFA World CUP with son #1. Fortunately for her team that previous Fall, my daughter was often the only one who scored a goal for while playing midfield. And my youngest was finishing sixth grade with Ms. Schmitt! A much better year for him after a nightmare of a 5th grade teacher. My husband was still dividing work between clinical neurology at a small downstate hospital and teaching anatomy and neurology the other days at an Ivy League Medical School. Our marriage was much less strained after the stress of Residency. Phew! Life was busy and fine.

Twenty years ago we were in flux. We were still living in Illinois far far away from our families back East. We'd moved off-campus to an apartment complex with a swimming pool, and I'd become depressed. You'd think that being only a mile away wouldn't matter, but I sorely missed the on-campus community of folks there. We'd gotten permission to kept the two older kids in their same elementary school, so I drove them the four minutes between home and school twice a day. Gee, if this were 1989 I could tell the tale about how the car was stolen and used as the getaway car in a jewelry store robbery!

Dh was in medical school, but still teaching at the chiropractic college (we needed $$ for food & rent. ;-). I was home with three kids ranging in age from 11 to two. One day the two year old watched GhostBusters when he happened to be very ill with a fever, and as I learned years later, was then convinced from then on that ghosts were real. He eventually accumulated and used his GB Protonpack and Containment trap, and PKE meter all while dressed in his Ghostbuster suit. This was also the kid who when done drinking from his glass of water thought the glass should be empty, and consistently poured the rest of the water out onto the floor.^^

Older son was taking piano lessons, playing soccer spring and fall -- and summer - and tried out scouting. It was too hectic for him to have all three of these going on. He quit the piano sessions and the scouts as well. Coming home from school and playing with Lego was much preferred as he needed that down time after a full day. Our daughter was thriving in school doing just fine with life in general with friends, fall and spring soccer, and Brownies. Very opposite from Bro # 1 she thrived on keeping busy. She was still wanting to be right by my side at home watching whatever it is that mothers do. Life was hectic.


Thirty years ago I was full into being a SAHM. I'd been graduated from college quite a few years back, then from chiropractic college and been awarded my Doctor of Chiropractic degree. We had one car we shared, first an ancient Ford donated by my brother (unwanted by his neighbor when her husband died), then an old VW bug that became decommissioned when sugar was poured in the gas tank, then a Chevy Citation for all of 3 days - we returned it. (They'd obliterated the glove box, an dthe added A?C had no vent settings.) Followed immediately by the tiny Mazda station wagon.



We lived on campus at a chiropractic college for low cost housing even though dh was a professor at the school. He'd embarked on a PhD program in Anatomy (Neurology) since _just_ teaching neuro would "be too boring." I lived in jeans, overalls and t-shirts most of the time, adding layers in winter. Offspring No. 1 turned one year old and we shared the birthday celebration in a local town park with the son (whose birthday was two days later) of friends. My dh taught me how to x-country ski that winter and I managed to go out three times a week (the first days out each week were with dear departed Helen Chamberlin Heyden) and get into the best shape of my life! It didn't hurt that it snowed before New Year's and kept snowing and stayed on the ground til mid-March. I baked bread, made our own yogurt and sprouts, was mostly a vegetarian, and spent my spare time reading any and all journal articles on breastfeeding and human milk that I could find - about 1-4 a month at most. I still read these articles, but now by searching and reading on-line. Then you had to take a volume of Index Medicus and actually turn the pages ^^. Life was good.