I wonder how things done with tiny tots influence them in later years, do you have any special experiences with them?

Three year old Charlotte was my child during the daytime, a 'dagmamma' in Norwegian, she was about 2 years old when we went to Vaar Frelsersgravlund in Oslo, Our Saviours Graveyard. There were many big trees and many old elaborate graves, at the centre of the graveyard was a hillock, also with graves on it.

When she was one year old I took Charlotte there in her pram and when she cried I would take her up to the nearest bush, in Autumn, and we would crackle the dried leaves in our hands and she would forget to cry. Or I would take her pram under the big weeping willow and let all the long thin branches trail over her face. One time I put her pram under a little tree and shook the brown leaves so that she became buried in them, laughing with her as I did. Later of course she tossed the leaves about herself.

This special day we were in the graveyard and as there had been snow everything had a layer on it, when we reached the long wonderful avenue of chestnuts, now destroyed, we took each others hands and pretended we were King and Queen, and walked slowly, in a dignified manner, past the graves that flanked the path, I wrote afterwards.:-

Hatted audience
as we march, king and queen
up the avenue of chestnuts.

and as we reached a higher area where there were a large group of graves(people) these we pretended were a choir, we conducted them seriously, looking to see who they were individually and what was written on their graves. The grave stones that had been gathered up and stacked, we thought we might play cards with.

Indoors we danced to Baroque music and Norsk folkemusikk, she copied the TV later doing the same. When I read the story of Jemima Puddleduck she immediately said "and now we shall act it" and we did, the fox looking over the newspaper at this dish of a duck coming towards him, etc. So she was also inventive.

I have no idea if any of this influenced Charlotte this way or that, she danced, she sang, she studied psychology, she worked in a food shop and what she will do next, I don't know either. We shall see!