Infancy

My mom told me that when she was eight months pregnant with me, she dragged her left leg because I was such a heavy load. Unluckily for her I ended up being one week overdue, and I'm sure she was glad to have the pregnancy over with. I was born March 12, 1975 in the Saint Marks Hospital at approximately 10:00 a.m.

I have lived in Salt Lake City all my life, and have even lived in the same house since I was born. Not ever having to move has probably made growing up a lot easier. Utah has been a wonderful place for me to spend my growing years. If I had the chance to go back and try it over, I wouldn't.

I was a pretty healthy baby and didn't keep Mom or Dad up more than any other infant. At that time my older brother, Russell, was almost four, and my only sister, Tricia, was almost two. You can imagine that the three of us together kept Mom and Dad pretty occupied. After I was born, they decided that three kids was plenty to take care of, and didn't have any more children (for a while).

I started walking at eleven months, which was great for me, but bad for everyone else and everything in the house. It was then that I really started getting into mischief. Any toy that hadn't been broken yet, I made sure that it became so. If I ever found something that was free standing, when I left, you might say that it changed to free falling.

My chances of roaming the house were slowed a little at eighteen months. I was pigeon toed and forced to wear braces around my legs every night for a year. My dad said that he always felt bad when he had to put them on me because I hated them so much. Strangely enough, he said I would still let him put them on, even when I was crying.

When I was going through the "terrible two's", I was "pody" trained, but not by my mother. She was still going to school up at the University of Utah, and ended up dropping me off every day at my Aunt Suzy's. So, while I was being pody trained my, mom was nowhere around. My mom felt like she wasn't around us as much as she should have been. Sometimes I wonder if my mother not being around that much when I was young has effected me much. I'm sure I still got my fair share of love.