Life is so confusing at 6

I spent a lot of my 6th year being some pretty interesting theories in life. The first being marriage. The way I thought picking your husband or wife out was that everyone who wanted to get married would go into a giant room with men on one side and women on the other and the announcer would say, “On your mark, get set, go!” and you would run and grab the spouse that you wanted. I came up with a grand plan. I wanted to marry a prince and princes wore crowns so before they said go, I was going to scan the crowd for where exactly the prince was standing and at go, I was going to run faster than anyone else and grab the prince, thus making me a princess.
That brings us to mis”conception” #2 -the baby making process. One day I asked my parents how a woman gets pregnant. Wanted to avoid “The Talk”, they told me, “You have to really want one.” Well, I pretty much came out of the womb wanting a baby of my own so I spent most of 6 scared to death that I was pregnant. I had actually already learned about S-E-X on the playground from one of the girls whose parents let her watch rated R movies, but I had not put 2 + 2 together that that was the actual way to make babies.

When I was 6, I did a good bit of traveling. My grandparents lived in New Hampshire, but then spent their winter months in Phoenix, AZ. Every other year my dad would visit them and take one of us kids along with him. I still remember my first plane ride and spending the week drinking orange soda, eating sugary cereals for breakfast, visiting Indian ruins, watching square dancers, picking grapefruits, and watching Jeopardy every evening.

That year we also did something that we never did which was take a vacation to a location that was not to visit family. We drove to Washington, DC for a week. My favorite things we did were swim in the hotel pool, wait in the freezing cold to go up to the top of the Washington Monument, and my #1 was our visit to Ford Theatre to see where Lincoln was shot.

We also still went camping at Baxter State Park, took our annual road trip to Canada which my dad was now able to accompany us on, spent time at Lake Winnipesaukee, AND we started going to Camp Faithful (which might actually have been the summer before). I LOVED Camp Faithful from the beginning. The first year we stayed in the cabin Starr and made so many friends. My mom ran vacation bible school in the mornings, we swam in the afternoons, and the evenings we spent in the tabernacle. The campground was like alittle world in itself and we had free reign. I loved every minute at Camp Faithful!

The final highlight of 6 was my kindergarten end of the year play. The theme was Mother Goose and nursery rhymes. Mother Goose was the lead and she arrived and the rest of the kindergarteners took turns reciting nursery rhymes to her. I remember the day of the big announcement of which parts each person would get. I wanted it so badly, AND the announcement came that I had gotten it. There was an old couple in the church who used to help with the maintance of the property and the church and I LOVED following them around and chatting with them. To rid me of my timidity, my mom made me stand outside our house on the hill and pretend that Roy & Lorna were down by the church and see if I could make them hear me. “I am glad my gander flew swiftly. I arrived here just in time. I heard you little children all know your nursery rhymes.”

Well my 5th birthday started out with a bang. We were still living at “The Walsh’s” and all my friends came over for my party. And I threw up. At my own birthday party.

Shortly after my 5th birthday, we moved to Danbury, CT, where my dad had gotten a position as pastor at the Danbury Advent Christian Church. My brother’s name is Dan Berry and so there was concern that we were moving to Danbury, but people always ended up thinking it was humorous rather than teasing him about it.

Fall when I was 5 I started kindergarten. I remember going in for my kindergarten
interview and having so much fun. Then at kindergarten orientation, I met Courtney who became my best friend. I still remember my first day of school because Martha walked me to my classroom and then just as my mom had told me to do, I walked up to Mrs. Seabury, shook her hand and informed her of who I was. Before I started school I had been very shy not liking being away from my mom too long, but I LOVED kindergarten. I remember my friend Kent crying outside in the hallway with his mom one day because he didn’t want to come in and I kept
poking my head out the door watching in bafflement that he would not want to be having fun with us in class and yelling to him reminding him of all the fun things we were going to do that day. My closest friends were Courtney, Kent, and Todd.

The summer when I was 5 we added a few locations to our summer family vacations. We started
camping at Baxtor State Park in Maine with Skip & Elaine and their son Aaron took us canoeing and taught me how to blow bubbles with bubble gum that year. We also went and watched bears
from afar and I was too scared to go swimming because of the leeches. Mom took about 1000 pictures of the loons on the lake.

I was not allowed to go to sleepovers when I was this young, but for some reason my mom let me go to Courtney’s sleepover birthday where we also went to the Danbury Fair Mall, rode the carousel, and I saw my first movie in a theatre “The Fox and the Hound.”

Munchkin. This is one of the many nicknames my mom called me growing up (the other was Tuts, my dad’s for me was his little bambino) This a name was actually very accurate as my mom has always been a huge Dunkin Donuts fan and some days when the other kids were in school, my mom and I would go to DD where I would pick out a few munchkins. I begged my mom to let me have a real donut and she always told me I was too little for one. Finally one day she
relented and guess what- she was right, I couldn’t finish it all! Moms can be so smart. It was back to the munchkins for me.

Four years old was a year of big change for me. My dad felt that he was supposed to quit his job
at the shipyard and become a pastor. We sold the big house on the hill in Canterbury and until we were in our new location, we rented “The Walsh’s” which is what we called that house because
that was the landlord’s names. Martha got to sleep in a loft, Jill had a room with a little tv in it and for the first time we lived in a neighborhood with lots of other kids to play with. I also developed my first crush who was one of Martha’s friends (I always did have a thing for older men). I remember getting to dress up for Halloween (as a princess of course) and marching in the Canterbury Halloween parade with my siblings and then watching Davy Crockett on tv that night while the trick or treaters stopped by. We were not allowed to trick or treat growing up, but I don’t remember minding at all. I remember going to see Santa with Tim at the local library. I remember somebody dropped a bunch of pees on the floor during dinner and since the floor was
green, we had a hard time finding them all.

A Very Silly 3 Year Old I No Doubt Made!

For those of you that know me, it is not surprising that most of my memories from 3 years old were of playing with my friends. Tim Sandbourne taught me about this time how to pee in the woods and had an Indian birthday party where his dad painted all the boys faces as Indians and he made me the Indian Princess. Sarah Bailey broke her arm at church when we were running playing tag, and Shiloh Whiting was always a fun time.

I LOVED performing. I would record myself singing and make up songs on my mom's cassette tape deck and I LOVED when our Sunday School class would learn songs with motions and perform them in front of the church. This carried on til about 5th grade when I realized that I actually had not been blessed with a great voice.

I also loved dresses that "spun". My mom bought me a slip with lots of layers to make my dresses poof out, but the problem was that it had what I thought was the most beautiful flower embroidered to the tank top part of it which I of course wanted to show everyone by lifting up the dress to reveal the slip. Let's just say, this did not last long...

What I don't remember doing, but my brother still rolls his eyes at is made up my own Knock Knock joke which I guess I always found hilarious, but was below my brother's level of humor... Knock knock. Who's there? Apple. Apple who? Apple eat it.

The brillance of it still makes me giggle everytime I tell it!

The Not So Terrible 2s

So I figured if I had had a bad case of the "terrible 2s" I would have been hearing about it since I was little, but just incase, I called my mom today and as I figured, I guess I didn't really ever go through the terrible 2s. The other thing is as hard as it is for most people to believe, 2 is around the time that I start having memories from.

Some of you may know this, my mom is an alien (I actually bought her a pin that said, "I am an alien" one year and as cool as my mom is, she actually wore it with pride- you rock Mams!). She is Canadian. So as I have mentioned in past posts, every summer she would load us 4 kids into our subaru and we would visit my aunts, uncles, & Nan AND THEN we would board a ferry and head to Green Bay, Nova Scotia where we would spend out days building sandcastles, swimming, and climbing rocks and our evenings taking long walks on the beach. I am actually shocked that we did this as Nan's cottage called Grey Rocks had no running water or indoor plumbing and Mammy is not exactly what you would call a roughing it type person. But those weeks were always so much fun! My dad was an engineer at a ship yard at that time so he had to stay home for most of the summer. My dad is an amazing builder (I mentioned that he had built the house we were living in at the time), but he also built our beds, dressers, nightstands, and bookcases in our rooms. I still remember coming home that summer and while we were away he had made me my very own big girl bed to replace my crib and I remember being so excited because he had picked out sheets with little flowers on them for me.

This was also the year that my parents went on their first and last (til I was in 4th grade) solo trip leaving us with our best friends the Sandbournes. My dad had to go over to England and Scotland for work and so my mom went along and they made a vacation of it. They ended up missing us so much that they never did that again.

See, what's so terrible about 2?

And then I was 1!

And then I was 1. Apparently I have always had my own sense of style as well as an inclination towards cowboys & pink frills. :)

That year I was still living in the big house up on the hill in Canterbury, NH. Another year I remember nothing of, but we vacationed to Nova Scotia and New Brunswich in the summer & in the winter we sapped the trees on our property and made our own maple syrup.

The most popular tale that I heard about myself at the age is that the doctor was very worried because I wasn't talking by the age that they normally think kids should be. In time, I found my voice and once I started talking, I haven't stopped since. My mom used to always tease me that she wished I had been made with an "off" switch. : )

And then there was me!

"A new baby is the beginning of all things- wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities."

I have officially entered my last month of my 20s. I am actually super excited about turning 30, but it is making me really get sentimental about my past so I thought it would be fun to share my last 30 years each day here. So....

THEN THERE WAS ME: Erin Lynn Berry

I was born December 5th, 1981 at 12:07AM. My mom claims she had no labor pains with me and my mom isn't an exaggerator so I tend to believe her. My grandfather once told me he wanted me to be born on his birthday, but I came 3 days earlier than his plan. I actually arrived before the doctor did as I was anxious to start LIVING LIFE!

Born to:Ken and Ann Berry (both 29 which is crazy because I can't believe at my age my parents had 4 kids) and I had sister Jill, 6, Martha, 4, and Dan, 2 (and he didn't want a younger sibling, especially not a sister, but after about 14 years I finally won him over. One of my strengths in life.)

Lived in: Canterbury, NH. I was brought home to the beautiful big house on the hill that my dad had built with his own 2 hands and had planned to retire in. Boy, talk about life having other plans!

Little did my parents know that they had received their most emotional, most sassy, most illogical, most romantic, most dramatic, most snuggly, and yet super cute, and ultimately lovable bundle of joy yet. And with me, their Berry Patch was complete!

Visited in my first year: First trip to New Brunswick & Nova Scotia Canada. I might have traveled elsewhere, but let's be honest- I really don't remember much from that first year. : )