I picked up some pretty shells while I was on the beach, so all the way back I played with the seashells. Daddy sent me more shells from the islands when he went to Okinawa, and he sent a Japanese war doll who looked real, with a sword and a frightful helmet-a Samurai warrior.

I got soap wrappers at the hotel where we stayed. So I had another collection. I had flags too. They were little paper flags from all the different countries. I pasted them on cardboard sticks. I had coins from different lands too. Daddy sent them from all over the pacific.

When I got back, Ford and I talked about the trip. We talked about Peter Rabbit all the time too. He was a real person to us. We made snowmen whenever it snowed. We played in the snow all day. We rolled in it and ate it when it first fell. It was very clean and white.

I had a wooden sled. It was red, white, and blue with USS Linda painted on it. Daddy's ship was USS Rockingham, APA229. The sled was made like a boat with sides on it so I could never fall off. A friend of Mommy's made it for me out of hardwood.

For a while, I went to a nursery school. But a little boy pulled my hair out and I had colds, so Mommy kept me home. I met friends there who came to play with me-Michael Tepper and Bobby Sink.

I went to another nursery school, a music nursery school, on West Green Street in Champaign later on. Mrs. Foster and her daughters were in charge of it. They taught me my first piano lessons. I liked them very much. When Daddy came back from the navy, I played there in a recital.

It was very cold in Champaign-Urbana, but I had lots of warm clothes. I had a leopard muff and hat trimmed in leopard fur that Aunt Lorraine once had when she was a little girl. I had another muff. It was a golden brown fur with a puppy's face on top, floppy ears, and brown eyes almost hidden by the fur.

I liked perfume and bubble bath and fancy powder. I had a powder mitt that Mommy always dusted on me after my bath. She always wrapped me in a big white soft cotton cloak with a hood so I wouldn't get chilled.

I wore the knitted wool clothes Daddy's mother made when I was little. They kept me warm and they were beautiful.

When Daddy came back, we both toasted marshmallows and ate lots of popcorn and peanut butter because he liked these things too.

We both liked the same things to eat. We liked tomato soup, spaghetti, corn, milk, hamburgers, tuna salad, mushrooms, french fried potatoes, potato chips, pancakes, french toast, scrambled eggs, toast, cheese, apples, seedless grapes, and crunchy cereal. We liked chocolate pudding better than any other dessert. I helped stir it. I usually had a good appetite. Mommy and I both liked licorice, and we liked to eat raisins out of boxes.

I loved picnics. We had lots of them in the backyard. I had my friends over, and we sat at my little white table.

Ford and I often went to the park near us in Urbana. It was called Carle Park, and we liked to look at the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the entrance on Race Street. There is a wonderful playground there. We liked the swings, and we could run all over the soft grass.

Page 8