Remembering Things From When I Was A Baby

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I remember my second birthday. I remember the next day too and I was excited because I thought it was my birthday again. I can remember lots of little things before that too.

Among the earliest things I can remember (all of them before the age of five) are:

Being taken along as my parents were looking for a new lawnmower. There was a shop with three Flymos outside - one blue, one red, one purple (not necessarily in that order). My parents ended up buying a red petrol-engine Flymo.

Hearing "Out of Time" by Chris Farlowe on the living-room record player, and seeing some picture of penguins. To this day, penguins are the first thing that come into my mind if I hear that song.

Hearing The Captain & Tenille's "Love Will Keep us Together" on the radio. That's one of the earlier songs I remember hearing, being roughly two years old at the time.

Being around at the house of some relatives, where I remember someone (male) yelling "Open the bar door" outside the rumpus room. The house had a spiral staircase, which I found fascinating.

Hearing "Five Years," the opening track to David Bowie's ...Ziggy Stardust... album, and looking at the painting of Breughel's Children's Games on the wall at the same time.

I have two memories from babyhood. I already wrote on one of them in here but I can't locate it in any time - I only know it comes from the time I was a baby: an image of a baby crib standing in a row of several similar cribs (I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone's carrying me though I don't remember being held, as otherwise I would be just put in the crib, unable to see this from above).

The next image I remember comes either from the time I was 10 months old or from the one I was maybe 3 weeks shy of my 1st birthday - I know it must have been this or that time because these were the only occasions when I was in Warsaw with mom and this is what the image from my memory is: myself and mom on a train in Warsaw; she was showing a famous monument of the city to me through the window. I recently recalled this scene though it was kept by my memory for all those years; before I recalled it, I thought my very first memories to come from the time when I was less than three.

I remember being 3 years old and looking up at my mom as she told me she used to be a kid. I remember thinking "NO WAY! You were always mommy!"

I have a very bad memory, though. I remember some of the more insignificant things and forget important stuff. I've even been known to remember things that didn't happen.

I only barely remember being in my crib, which was probably around age 2 or 3. I've been told many stories about my years as a toddler, everything from jumping out of my crib to having been burned by hot water in the tub, yet I barely seem to remember any of this happening to me. You tell me what I did from elementary school afterwards, I could tell you almost exactly what happened. Strange it is...

@MONIQUEIJ: do you have something on the subject to post or not?

I have a lot of memories of our old house, which we moved out of when I was...3, I believe. The earliest memory I can think of, I was already walking...I have no idea what age you're supposed to learn to walk, but fairly certain it was before my second birthday party, which I used to be able to remember, but can't anymore.

Also remember asking my parents for a brother...dunno if mom was already pregnant at that point or not, but he's almost three years younger than me. I also remember when we took mom to the hospital so he could be born. We were at a K-Mart, and I remember hearing Back in the High Life by Steve Winwood over the PA, the earliest song I can recall hearing.

Developmentally typical children learn to walk sometime between 8 months and 1 1/2.

I can remember as a kid, climbing up the washing machine even though it was quite tall in stature and one wonders how I achieved such a feat..

Wow! It is amazing some of the people on here remember. I remember getting cereal in my nose and we had to go to the hospital to get it out. A few months ago I told somebody about that and my dad was like,"You remember that?"

I remember my grandparents' house that they moved out of when I was eight months old...

My first memory is of around my second birthday - can be dated because we were living in a different place for 6 months from when I was 18 months old to two years old. The interesting thing about this memory is that it is pre-linguistic. I could speak well at 18 months, but probably due to rote learning and not understanding. In my memory I am knee high to all the adults and they are all talking unintelligably way above me (not understanding doesn't bother me though). This memory became particularly clear when I was living in France a few years ago and I was having a similar experience in French (but caring a lot that I couldn't understand). In the memory I am picked up to choose a doll and my impression is that I didn't know which to choose and put my hand out to look at one and my mother assumed that that was the one I wanted. She says that from her memory I did choose, but I can see how she might think that when I wouldn't have had a way to communicate exactly what I wanted.

I also have some bizarre and frightening memories from when I was very young, but by the age of 3-4 the memories become a lot clearer and more like memories of a couple of year's ago. I do remember my lack of understanding of things as a child and my much poorer theory of mind. It annoys me when people go on about children being able to understand right and wrong and so should be prosecuted as adults (this discussion occurs frequently in the UK). My memories of being a child are of knowing right and wrong because of what my parents said and the consequences of being naughty, but not having an essential feeling for it - this only develops later with the right upbringing and clearly these people cannot remember at all what it was really like to be a child. Some of my memories of the way I thought as a young child (age 6-7) are quite disturbing - I was quite sado-masochistic in my thoughts (not actions luckily) and can easily imagine that with a slightly less supportive upbringing that I might have ended up a psychopath rather than someone who desperately tries to avoid hurting people (even emotionally) because it hurts myself just as much.

I'm shocked that people in their 20s seem to have forgotten much of what happened to them before the age of 7-8. It is known that pruning of neurons occurs in the brain during the teenage years and this is not supposed to occur as much in autistic people, so maybe this pruning removes unnecessary childhood memories from NT people. I wasn't that abnormal as a child, but became more so during teenage years - never was a proper teenager really and maybe this was reflected in a lack of brain pruning.

18 months (the date confirmed by mom) - nearly dying of the whooping cough and having the mumps around the same time. Incidentally, I saw a show recently on autism and vaccines and they showed a baby wheezing and trying to catch its breath and I had to turn the volume down and look away. Told my SO to tell me when it was over. That baby's pain was too close to home. I remember it vividly, but I wouldn't think this is unusual for near death moments. I remember the all encompassing fear.

I remember going to sleep and often wondering if my breathing would stop once asleep (I don't mean while sick, this was a little later).

3-4 years - I remember making up songs and singing them. One I kept adding new lyrics too each day. It just went on and on and on.

Around 3, I remember peeling potatoes for the first time while sitting on the kitchen table.

At 2, I remember being stung by a wasp in the crux of my elbow.
I also remember, erm, playing one night in my crib, and my brother, who shared the same room, said "stop that!", because the crib was creaking. I just waited a bit and went back to it, only more quietly.

I remember a few wandering ventures when mom had to send out my much older sisters to find me.

I remember getting hit by a metal shovel in the face by a two year old at age 4. I figure that would be kind of hard to forget. However, I don't remember anything beyond the point I came screaming home. I don't remember the stitches being put in at all. I had to be held down by 4 people as the doctor placed them in my brow. I've tried really hard to remember that, but I was apparently in total meltdown mode.

Around 3.5, I tried to pee standing up like my only same age playmate and neighbor at the time. Mom was not impressed.

And last because I should stop now, at 3-4, I remember asking my mother over and over while we were both upstairs and she was putting away laundry, etc, "mommy, do you love me?" To which she'd always answer patiently "Yes, dear, I love you." After about 20 times I was satisfied, and I finally found something else to occupy my time with. I don't recall ever asking her that at any other time.