GB, my youngest daughter, at 3, "won" the booby prize at a family night at our 5 year old's school - it was an exceptionally ugly 2qt pot from the '70s. Porcelain over tin or something like that. Beige with brown speckles and orange mushrooms. She LOVED that pot. When we arrived home from the outing, she insisted on cooking in it. She wanted to cook dinner. I gave her a carrot and a potato and some beans, helped her a little with the peeling and cutting, and we cooked it together and ate the results, exclaiming all the while on the deliciousness of her dinner. Round about the same time, she also discovered my (size 8) boot-style roller skates, and put her 3 year old feet in them and proceeded to skate all over the show. We had given her older sisters skates for Christmas, but not Jess - we thought she was too small. At that time, she wore (every day) the green jersey my aunt had sent to her (really super ugly mint green with a boat neck)....the draw? That jersey came in the mail wrapped in brown paper with Jessica's name on it - it was special...she was so thrilled to have received her very own mail. She wore that jersey over Roseanne's hand-me-down blue Little Bow-Peep style flower-girl dress. Sometimes she'd pair the outfit with some red Wellington boots (or the skates). She was the happiest little thing with her pink cheeks and fluffy baby hair (always with a bird's nest of tangles at the back). Always thinking up something new to do....we lived in South Africa back then, and toys like the children enjoy here were so prohibitively expensive that our girls never had as many as what I see little ones have here... but they were really happy little things anyway.
